
Ill 




Class. 
Book. 
Copyright lf_ 



pi. \ ■-.-J ~~- ± J , ., 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



THE RATIONAL TEST 



BIBLE DOCTRINE IN THE 
LIGHT OF REASON 



BY 



LEANDER S. KEYSER, D. D. 

AUTHOR OF "IN BIRD LAND," "BIRDS OF THE ROCKIES," "OUR 
BIRD COMRADES," "THE ONLY WAY OUT," ETC. 



PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 29 1908 

~ Copyritf-nt Entry , 

CLASS CL XXc Mo, 

COPY &. 



Copyright, 1908, 

BY THE 

LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY 



THE VIEWPOINT 



To show that certain fundamental Biblical doc- 
trines, as held by orthodox believers, are reasonable — 
that is the chief purpose of this volume. The author's 
position is that reason should not be placed above the 
Bible; that is rationalism. Very often the proper 
attitude of the human mind before God's truth is, 
"Believing where we cannot prove." It is not ir- 
rational that it should be so, for in many of the com- 
monest affairs of life we must often "walk by faith, 
and not by sight*" The earliest, acts of an infant in 
its mother's arms are acts of intuition and faith, not 
of reason; nor are such acts unusual throughout the 
entire course of life. Thinking men will not forget 
"the sweet reasonableness" of faith. 

It is incorrect to think that faith and reason are 
opposed to each other. This error springs from the 
supposition that faith and credulity are synonymous 
terms. So far from this being true, it is an undisputed 
fact that many of the wisest and best men of the world 
possess the most childlike faith in Christ and His 
revelation. Superior knowledge makes a man con- 
scious of the limitations of human learning, and, there- 
fore, leads to humble trust and a childlike disposition. 
Whether faith is rational or not depends upon its 
object. Faith in that which is true and right is a most 
rational act of the soul ; blindly to accept error is 
credulity, and is, therefore, irrational. 

By means of an illustration we may see what a 
beautiful thing faith is, per se, if it is rightly directed 
and posited. When a little child, lying in its mother's 



IV THE VIEWPOINT 

arms, looks up trustingly and lovingly into her face, 
and returns the smile on her lips, everyone declares 
that such an instinctive act of faith is an indication of 
the normal relation which should exist between a 
mother and her child. HoweVer, if the child shrinks 
from its mother and cries out with fear at her approach, 
we know that such a state of affairs is abnormal, pro- 
claiming something radically wrong with the mother 
or the child, or with both. Thus we see that faith is 
a beautiful psychical act when it is rightly posited. 
On the other hand, doubt is by no means always 
rational, normal and ethical ; for, in the home, the 
social life and the business world, it often works un- 
told harm. One of the chief purposes of this book is 
to prove that faith in God, the Bible and Jesus Christ 
is a right and rational act of the human soul. 
-" This is the place to say, too, that many Biblical doc- 
trines never could have been discovered by man's un- 
aided research. The method of creation, the origin 
of man, the genesis of evil, the plan of redemption in 
Christ — these are doctrines that had first to be re- 
vealed. However, after the revelation has been made 
in Holy Writ, we believe that the teachings can be 
justified by reason; that they can be defended by the 
rational process ; that, at all events, they can be proved 
not to be unreasonable. 

Again, our firm conviction is that unbelief and 
rationalism cannot be overcome by ridicule and de- 
nunciation. It is much more effective and Christian 
to treat the doubter kindly, answer his arguments con- 
vincingly, and prove that orthodoxy is rational. After 
all, no man can believe what seems to him to be ab- 
surd. Therefore, if you can by a logical process re- 
move his intellectual difficulties, you are doing him a 
signal service, and may open to him the shining high- 
way of evangelical faith. This is no concession to the 
rationalistic spirit; it is simply removing the stone 



THE VIEWPOINT V 

from the door of the sepulchre so that Lazarus may 
come forth alive. And it should be remembered that 
our Lord bids His disciples to do that much for every 
soul that is struggling in doubt. In leading men to 
faith, as in other Christian effort, we are co-workers 
with God. 

At this point both fairness and modesty compel us 
to offer an explanatory remark. It would be pre- 
sumption to contend that we have, in this volume, 
been able to prove absolutely to the unregenerate 
reason the truth of the doctrines considered. No ; we 
make no such arrogant claim ; we simply maintain that 
we have made an honest effort to remove difficulties, 
so that the doubter may be led to go to Christ Him- 
self in penitence and faith for the final and convincing 
word of truth. 

However, we repeat, it is neither wise nor ethical 
to berate and belabor the unbeliever. Do not declare 
harshly that "there are no sincere infidels/' and call 
them all captious and perverse. Even if the assertion 
were true, you would never win the doubter by such 
ungracious speech; you would simply anger him and 
drive him further from the truth. But there are 
honest doubters. Treat them as if they were sincere 
and intelligent, and you may find the way to their 
reason, conscience and heart. The best way to win 
people is to be winsome. 

We rejoice in the consciousness that we have been 
able to lead more than one doubter to Christ by first 
being gentle with him, then by trying to prove the 
rationality of Bible teaching, and thus overcoming, at 
least in part, the barriers in the way of faith. Even 
the believer is made all the happier and stronger when 
a Biblical teaching or incident, which once seemed to 
him to be quite hard to accept, has been shown to be 
right and rational. 

Some of the chapters of this book deal with unbelief 



VI THE VIEWPOINT 

pure and simple ; a few of them touch somewhat upon 
the negative higher criticism ; all treat of honest doubt. 
The volume has been written with the sincere hope 
that it may be the means of banishing the doubter's 
difficulties and strengthening the believer's faith. 

L. S. K. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Rationale of Theism .... 9 

II. The Plenary Inspiration of the Bible . . 24 

III. The Doctrine of the Trinity .... 43 

IV. The Bible Narrative of Man's Creation . .57 
V. The First Temptation . . ... . 72 

VI. The Miraculous Conception of Christ . . 87 

VII. The Rational Basis of the Incarnation . 102 

VIII. The Atonement a Vicarious Sacrifice . .119 

IX. The New Birth: Why Necessary ? ... 139 

X. Christ's Resurrection : Its Ultimate Purpose 157 

XI. The Doctrine of the I^ast Judgment . . .175 



THE RATIONAL TEST 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM 

There are at least two kinds of atheists in the 
world. It can hardly be denied that some men are 
atheists because the wish is father to the thought. 
Their lives are corrupt, and having no desire to repent 
or amend, it salves their consciences and quiets their 
uneasiness to believe that there is no Supreme Being 
to whom they are accountable. Such a view accords 
best with their epicurean philosophy, which might be 
summed up in the adage, "Let us eat, drink, and be 
merry, for to-morrow we die." Of this class of 
atheists the Psalmist said, a little trenchantly: "The 
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." 

However, we hasten to add that not all doubters 
of the divine existence are doubters because they wish 
to lead bad lives. We know a doubter who, while he 
does not live like a spiritually-minded Christian, does 
live an upright life in many ways, and declares that he 
is just as much under moral obligation as any other 
man. He is known to be honest in his business rela- 
tions almost to the point of scrupulosity. We should, 
therefore, never denounce men's motives in a whole- 
sale style, even though they may go to the extremity 
of calling in question the existence of a personal God. 

Such men have doubtless become skeptical on ac- 



IO THE RATIONAL TKST 

count of real intellectual difficulties. They think they 
see things in nature and in history that do not accord 
with the idea that the universe has been made by a 
kind, beneficent, and all-wise Being. Perhaps they 
have so long contemplated the sorrows of the world, 
the apparent cruelties of nature, and the seemingly 
haphazard way in which many things occur, that their 
eyes have become blinded to the amenities of life, the 
beauty and wise design in nature, the moral order of 
the world, and the sure indications that, in God's own 
time, all wrongs will be made right and all mysteries 
explained. 

This chapter will be devoted to stating and ampli- 
fying several of the most cogent arguments for theistic 
belief, giving those first that are most easily compre- 
hended; afterwards those that penetrate more deeply 
into the constitution of things. 

First, the Bible is an intensely theistic book. In 
the first sentence the capital word is "God." All 
through its glowing pages God is immanent. While 
there is no labored argument anywhere in the Bible 
to prove the existence of a Supreme Being, His ex- 
istence is everywhere taken for granted; His Spirit 
pervades it all, and is the basal rock of its philosophy 
of the world. No quotations are required to prove this, 
and we need only to stop here to indicate what it 
means in the logical process that the Bible is so pre- 
eminently a theistic book. 

The most influential book in the world is the Bible — 
the Book that has taken firmest hold on the thought of 
mankind, that has been the main factor in producing 
our present high state of civilization, that has regen- 
erated the character of many nations and the lives 
of countless individuals. It is the Bible that has 
transformed many of the savage nations of the earth 
into highly moral communities. The Bible has won 
the homage of the strongest intellects of the world. 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM II 

These, we take it, are indisputable facts. Now it ar- 
gues much for the truth of such a book that it has 
wielded so potent an influence for good upon the human 
family. Is it likely that a book whose basal principle 
is false would have done more good in the world than 
any other book, or than all other books combined? 
If so, we are living in a world where error is more 
benignant than truth; and that makes the world a 
moral hodgepodge. Take any atheistic book that you 
can recall; how large has been its circulation? Into 
how many languages and dialects of the world has it 
been translated? How many people's lives have been 
transformed by its teaching? We challenge anyone 
to point to a single drunkard, or libertine, or wrong 
doer of any other kind, who has been reclaimed to a 
life of virtue through the teaching of atheism. On 
the other hand, thousands upon thousands of sinners 
of all kinds and degrees have been morally healed and 
saved through the power of Biblical teaching. 

Thus the atheist is put into a cul-de-sac. His teach- 
ing infuses no hope into the heart, but rather destroys 
what it finds there; it comforts no sorrow; it inspires 
with no high ideals ; it transfigures no lives ; instead of 
putting moral fibre into men's natures, it is more likely 
to enervate them and give a loose reign to license. 
True, atheists may loudly profess an exalted regard 
for morality; yet they know well enough that, if their 
doctrines are true, they have no real basis for ethical 
distinctions, and can offer nothing but the baldest 
earthly and mercenary sanctions for right doing. 
Suppose, now, that atheism were true — we should 
then have the anomaly of the truth doing more harm 
than good, a philosophy that is contrary to every 
rational conception of right and wrong. On the other 
hand, suppose that the Bible is in error in its very 
first principle — its theistic teaching — then we have the 
spectacle of the most erroneous book in the world 



12 THE RATIONAL TEST 

being the best book in the world, the most potent for 
good. For our part, we should very much dislike to 
believe that we are living in a world so sadly dis- 
arranged as to make truth dangerous and harmful, 
while error is safe and beneficent. 

Our next appeal is to what is often called the "uni- 
versal consciousness" in the world of mankind. 
There is scarcely a nation on the globe that does not 
have a strong belief in some kind of a Supreme Being. 
Some travelers tell us that there are one or two ex- 
ceptions to this rule. What are the exceptions? 
These very exceptions are the most convincing argu- 
ment in favor of the almost universal principle. Some- 
where in "darkest Africa" they tell us that there 
are a few tribes that have no appreciable conception 
of a God. What is the mental and moral status of 
those tribes? Are they educated, refined, civilized? 
No! they are the lowest people in the scale of hu- 
manity known to the ethnologist. It is a poor argu- 
ment for atheism that its only tribal representatives 
in the world are the nearest to the brutes. 

Otherwise, as has been said, all nations believe in 
a Supreme Ruler. And this is not merely a slight 
and ephemeral phase of human belief, but so powerful 
a faith that it lies at the basis and is the inspiring cause 
of vast systems of religion — systems that mold the 
national character and life. The fact is, in heathen 
countries, as in Christian, nothing is so potent as re- 
ligion, nothing takes a deeper hold on life, nothing 
does more to fashion character. If there is no God, 
and the world came by chance, or is eternal, as you 
choose, how did the consciousness of God ever dawn 
upon the universal human heart? What brought 
about such a "fortuitous concourse of atoms"? Think 
of it for a moment — a world without a God, and yet 
a world with a most potent universal belief in God! 
If there is no God, how the human mind could have 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM 1 3 

ever conceived the idea of a God is beyond the power 
of reason or philosophy to solve. On the other hand, 
if there is a God, how easy, how simple the explana- 
tion of this general theistic belief ! The apostle de- 
clares that "He hath not left Himself without a witness 
in any nation." There you have an adequate cause 
assigned for the universal effect. 

The existence and structure of the universe furnish 
an irrefragable argument for theism. This argu- 
ment we now desire to examine with some degree of 
thoroughness. Only two suppositions regarding the 
physical universe are possible — either it is eternal or 
it was created. If the former, there is no God; if the 
latter, there must be a God. What is the advantage 
to thought in the theistic view ? It is this : It carries 
the mind back one step farther than does the atheistic 
view — that is, the atheist must stop w T ith the material 
universe, while the theist goes back to the Infinite 
Person who made the universe. Therefore, the theis- 
tic view is the prof ounder ; it goes farther and deeper 
into the primal cause of being. In the interest of 
pure thought this is a distinct advantage, for unbelief 
is wont to make the charge of narrowness and super- 
ficiality against opposing views, whereas we see that, 
in reality, atheism stops sooner than theism, and is 
therefore a shallower philosophy. 

Let us put this in a little different way for the sake 
of deepening the impression. Atheism does not go 
back to the absolute ; theism does. Atheism does not 
carry thought back as far as it can go; theism does. 
The proof of both statements is clear. By some 
mental effort your conception can go back — and that 
without a special strain — beyond the material world 
to a personal God who created all things; but if you 
should attempt to go back still farther, and ask, "Who 
then made God?" you will at once find thought frus- 
trated; for if some other Being had created the God 



14 THE RATIONAL TEST 

you first conceived, then that other Being would be 
God, and the first being would be only a creature. If 
you try to go back farther and farther, you soon must 
simply stop thinking, for you can arrive at no end. 
You see, therefore, that when you go back to a personal 
Being as the cause of all things, you have reached the 
ultima thule of thought. Therefore, theism is the pro- 
foundest philosophy possible in the realm of human 
conception. 

Nor is that all. We do not believe that rational thought 
can rest satisfied in the theory of an eternal material 
universe without a Creator. Ever and anon the mind 
wants to go back and back, and still farther back, 
through the eons of eternity, seeking for some begin- 
ning and some First Cause, but it can find no resting 
place, and so must give up the quest for utter weari- 
ness and despair. But is not the same thing true 
when we try to speculate on the eternity of God ? We 
think not entirely. While it is true that speculation 
must stop when we attempt to contemplate the eter- 
nal nature of God pure and simple; yet somehow the 
mind — at least, most minds — do find rest and satis- 
faction in the conception of a personal Creator, who 
is self-existent, who holds within His own nature all 
the principles of conscious being, who needs not to be 
made, and who is all-wise, all-powerful, and perfect 
in goodness. There the wearied mind finds a resting 
place. Perhaps it is because this view gives an in- 
spiring and glorious meaning to the universe. Be that 
as it may, thought grows quiescent in this view, and 
the heart finds a healing balm. Atheism, on the con- 
trary, furnishes no rest for the mind and no medica- 
ment for the heart. 

Again, if the universe is uncreated and eternal, it 
must continue to go on in much the same way through- 
out another eternity. Generations will continue to 
come and go forever and ever, each struggling and 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM 1 5 

sorrowing and longing for a brief time, and then sink- 
ing into eternal oblivion. Or perhaps some great 
cataclysm will decimate the human family, and then 
the untenanted universe will roll on forever without 
purpose. Is that an inspiring prospect? Is that why 
the sun, moon and stars exist ? Is that why the human 
body was made to fit so marvelously into its earthly 
environment and the human soul was endowed with 
longings for eternal life and blessedness? If that is 
all, life is a farce so senseless as to become tragedy, 
and the universe is a sphinx's riddle that shall never, 
never be deciphered. Let who will accept such a 
view. Side by side with this hopeless and helpless 
philosophy, place the system of Christian theism, and 
you have the contrast of light and darkness, of hope 
and despair. 

We regard the following as an unanswerable mode 
of reasoning. Remember the atheist's fundamental 
principle — that matter must be eternal, because if it 
ever had a beginning, it must have had a Creator. 
Now, the science of the day teaches that the universe 
has been undergoing a process of development or 
evolution. Perhaps no atheist who knows anything 
about astronomy, geology and biology will deny this. 
The nebular hypothesis is pretty generally accepted 
by scientific teachers. The universe is an unfolding 
mechanism or organism, as you please. The develop- 
ment has been from the dead, nebulous primordial 
matter up to the present form of the universe with its 
central sun and revolving planets and its manifestations 
of life and intelligence on the earth. Let us remember, 
then, that, according to the last dictum of science, the 
universe is, and always has been, a developing universe. 
Think for a moment, it must be a developing uni- 
verse, for there is testimony everywhere, at least on 
the earth, that the natural realm was not always what 
it is now. 



1 6 THE RATIONAL TEST 

From this premise note the reasoning carefully: 
If, as the atheist maintains, the universe is eternal, 
and is, and always has been, a developing mechanism, 
then it ought ages on ages ago to have reached its 
present stage of unfolding. Hold that thought rigid 
in the mind, and see whether it must not be so. Indeed, 
you cannot conceive of a time when the universe 
should not have been what it is now; yea, when it 
should not have reached its utmost limit of de- 
velopment. No other conclusion is logical, for the 
universe had an eternity in which to evolve. But 
since at the present time it has reached only a certain 
point in its evolution, it must have begun to develop 
in time, not in eternity. Therefore a developing uni- 
verse could not be eternal, and the atheist's proposition 
is overthrown. 

The reasoning may be carried a little further. The 
atheist may shift his position by saying that while 
matter is eternal, the evolution began at a certain 
point in time. Ah ! but suppose the original condition 
of matter to have been that of perfect quiescence for 
unnumbered cycles of ages, how could it have begun 
to develop without the injection of a new force from 
without? One of the first and simplest principles of 
physics is that matter is inert ; therefore, if matter 
was once perfectly quiescent, it never could have 
initiated motion or progress by its own inherent power 
alone. Some force external to itself must have moved 
it, and that force must have been a personal, self-de- 
termining Mind. Is any other possibility thinkable? 

Let us illustrate this as vividly as we can. We are 
sitting at our writing-table, on which lies our hand 
Bible. Matter being endued with the attribute of in- 
ertia, the Bible would remain lying on the desk forever 
if no power external to itself would move it. Even 
the tyro in the science of physics will admit that. 
Matter in and of itself cannot originate motion. How- 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM 1 7 

ever, there is one thing in the world, and only one, 
that can originate motion. Let us see. By an exer- 
cise of my will — a faculty of my mind — I decide that 
the Bible shall move ; I stretch out my hand and grasp 
the book, and lift it above my head; then I swing it 
to and fro; then I lower it and lay it upon the desk; 
then I pick it up again and carry it into the next room, 
and hand it to a friend. Do you observe? When I 
will that the book shall remain quiet, it lies at rest on 
my desk; when I will that it shall move, I cause it to 
move. The one thing in the world that can by an act 
of its own volition originate motion is mind. Matter 
never can. Mind ever can, and mind only. 

Go back, now, to the original condition of the 
universe, the primordial nebulae. Suppose it was 
entirely in a state of repose. It never could have 
originated motion because of its elemental law of 
inertia. How, then, did motion begin? There is only 
one kind of entity in the universe that can initiate 
motion (or anything else), and that is mind. Mind, 
which has the innate power of self-determination and 
self -activity. Therefore, Mind must have acted on the 
pristine particles of quiescent matter and started them 
upon the era of atomic movement. That Mind must 
have been of such an order as to answer to all our 
conceptions of a personal God. 

Should the reply be made that motion, like other 
laws of matter, is eternal, we fall back on our former 
argument that an eternally developing universe is im- 
possible, because in that case it should have reached 
its highest stage of evolution ages on ages ago. The 
fact of the matter is, you cannot have an eternal en- 
tity that is at the same time an evolving entity. The 
two terms are mutually exclusive; the two entities 
would be as impenetrable to each other as matter is to 
matter. The only kind of an eternal entity you can 
conceive of is one that is perfect from eternity. And 



1 8 THK RATIONAL TEST 

the only perfect eternal entity of which you can form 
a conception is a personal, self-existent, self-deter- 
mining, omniscient, omnipotent, absolutely holy God 
— that is, the God of Christian theism. 

If an unfolding universe of motion and force — the 
only kind that the science of the day will admit of — 
cannot be eternal, it must have had a beginning. It 
could not have given itself a beginning. Then it must 
have been created. But it could not have created it- 
self. Therefore, "in the beginning, God created the 
heavens and the earth." 

That there is in the universe an adaptation of means 
to ends in a remarkable and impressive way, no one 
can deny. The relative positions of the sun and the 
planets in the solar system look very like design. Re- 
membering the ends that are subserved by this ar- 
rangement, it does not seem that it could have merely 
happened so. In mathematics we have the rule of per- 
mutations. How many chances in millions and bill- 
ions would there have been for the mere "happening 
so" of so wise and beneficent a condition of affairs ? 

Coming down to the earth, man lives upon the 
ground. Around him and above him is an atmos- 
phere precisely adapted to his physical structure. The 
air is of precisely the right quality and density, not 
only for breathing, but also for bearing the clouds at 
the proper height above man, leaving the intervening 
space open and clear for his habitation. Considering 
that matter is made up of atoms and molecules, is it 
likely that by mere chance they would have fallen 
upon this admirable and orderly arrangement? Not 
once in quadrillions of years. 

There is a little chance in the world, or what we 
call chance— just enough, it would seem, to show us 
what a topsy-turvy world this would be if chance in- 
stead of God were its maker and ruler. Suppose 
that I hold in my hand a hundred dice blocks, num- 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM 1 9 

bered from one to a hundred. If I were to dash 
them to the floor, they would be scattered about pro- 
miscuously, not in orderly rotation. That is a little 
taste of chance. How many times would I have to 
throw them down before they would fall in a straight 
row and in consecutive order? If I were to live a 
million years, and would dash them down in a hap- 
hazard way once every five minutes, it is not likely 
that they would once fall in that order. Suppose you 
should turn your back for a few minutes, and when 
you wheel about, you should find the one hundred 
blocks lying on the floor in a straight row and in 
regular numerical rotation, what would be your first 
exclamation? That mind was the author of such reg- 
ularity; that I had intentionally laid them in that or- 
der. So you look around you in the world, and you 
see everywhere evidences of law, order, purpose, adap- 
tation of means to ends, and are you not driven to 
the conclusion that Mind must be the author of it all? 

The only entity in the world that we know anything 
about that chooses, designs, adapts, arranges in an 
orderly way is self-determining mind. Hence, when 
we see the same regimen obtaining in the universe, we 
can explain it only on the ground that there is back 
of it all a Mind that planned and executed. 

Scientists, whether theistic or atheistic, are fond of 
telling us that all things are controlled by law ; that 
there are no such occurrences as accidents; that, in- 
deed, the word "accident" should be elided from our 
lexicons, save as a term to express our ignorance of 
inexorable law. Perhaps they are right. But if the 
universe is simply an eternal "happen-so," how could 
it ever come about that its first and profoundest prin- 
ciple is domination by law? 

But, after all, law is an abstract term; it is not 
an entity or an intelligence in itself — only a method 
of operation. In the human world a law never exe- 



20 THE RATIONAL TEST 

cutes itself. Even if it could write itself on our civil 
statutes, it would remain a "dead letter" unless it had 
an executor. Is it not strange that some men look 
upon a law of nature as if it were at the same time 
its own maker and its own administrant? In civil 
affairs it is mind, and mind only, that legislates, judges, 
and executes. Does not this fact argue for the pres- 
ence and power of Mind back of all the wise and 
wonderful laws of the natural and moral universe? 

In the world we find man, a self-conscious being, 
a being endowed with will, conscience, judgment of 
right and wrong, and certain aspirations and hopes. 
Surely he is a strange being to be the outcome of 
blind nature, the evolution of dead nebulae. We state 
the proposition bluntly : Can consciousness evolve it- 
self out of unconsciousness? If, as some wiseacres con- 
tend, the law of evolution is written on every line of 
the universe, we maintain that the law of involution 
is inscribed everywhere no less distinctly. So far as 
can be seen, nothing in nature was ever evolved that 
had not previously been involved. Now, if self-con- 
sciousness in potential or seminal form was involyed 
in the primordial nebulae, it was there eternally or was 
thus endowed by the Creator. If the former, it should 
have come to self-consciousness eons on eons of ages 
before it did. Therefore, it must have been thus en- 
dowed in time, and the original involver must have 
been a self-conscious Being — that is, God. 

However, is the law of evolution, as held by its 
more radical advocates, the great law of the universe ? 
We very much doubt it, else it would be more distinct 
and pronounced to-day. The difficulty is the theory 
of evolution is only a speculation, and, according to 
our thinking, not a well-substantiated one. It assumes 
that evolution was the great fundamental law that 
operated through the ages in bringing the world to its 
present state. Why, then, did it become practically 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM 21 

a dead letter as soon as history began, when it was 
possible for man to trace and investigate it? Instead 
of coming forward with a clear word of testimony 
to-day, the ablest scientists have not yet found the 
non-living evolving into the living, nor the uncon- 
scious into the conscious, nor, indeed, is there one iota 
of scientific proof that even one species of animal or 
plant has ever developed into another. The monkeys 
of to-day have shown no signs of improvement over 
their ancestors of three or four thousand years 
ago. Save in man and under his intelligent train- 
ing, no progress in nature is to be seen since the 
era of human history began. Indeed, about the 
strongest law we now see in unaided nature is the 
law of the persistency of type. So powerful — one 
might almost say so obstinate — is this law that, when 
man's hand is removed for awhile from highly de- 
veloped and cultured kinds of animals and plants, they 
persist in reverting to the original inferior forms. 
It is a pity that nature so stubbornly sets herself to the 
task of balking the evolutionist — that is, a pity for his 
theory. 

Yet there has been progress in the unfolding of the 
world. Geological science plainly teaches that. If 
natural evolution cannot account for it, how is it to 
be accounted for? In only one way, so far as we can 
see — God, at such times as suited His wise and bene- 
ficent plans, injected into the world the necessary 
forces and principles, and then enabled them to un- 
fold according to the laws of their own being, "every 
one after its kind" — persistency of type. Much as this 
view of special creations has been derided by certain 
wise ones of the scientific guild, we submit whether it 
is not the only theory that furnishes an adequate ex- 
planation of the appearance on the earth of such a be- 
ing as man, with his intellect, will, and conscience, 
his aspirations after high and holy ideals, his longing 



22 THE RATIONAL TEST 

for immortal personal existence, and his feeling that 
he was made in the image of God. 

We add a brief statement of the ontological argu- 
ment for the existence of a Supreme Being: The 
relative cannot bring itself into being; cannot be self- 
existent; must be dependent on something else, which 
we call the absolute. The material universe is rel- 
ative ; it cannot be absolute, because it is a mere mech- 
anism, not being possessed of the power of self-depen- 
dence. Therefore, it must be derived. Now there 
must be the absolute, or there could not be the de- 
rived and the relative. Hence we are driven by the 
exigencies of thought back of the material universe 
to the absolute entity, which must be the ground and 
source of His own being and all related being — God. 

Thus cosmology, teleology and ontology prove the 
existence of a Supreme Being, who is the final cause 
and end of all things — the Absolute One. 

In spite of all the efforts of ratiocination, the 
doubter may have emotional difficulties of which a 
logical process cannot dispossess him. He may feel 
that the presence of so much sorrow and the occur- 
rence of so many casualties in the world are not con- 
sistent with the idea of a wise and beneficent Creator 
and Sovereign. In this feeling we have deep sympathy 
with the doubter. Yet we do not regard the difficul- 
ties as insuperable. The panacea lies in the words of 
Christ: "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in 
God, and believe in Me." 

Faith in the God of the Bible will compose the dis- 
quiet of the soul. The present life of sin and sorrow 
is not, according to the Bible, a permanent state, but 
only a temporary one — the gateway to a life of un- 
ending bliss and power and grace, in which we shall 
see the use of all the trials that flesh is heir to in this 
mundane existence. We do not have to live so long 
in this world of probation that we cannot bear a few 



THE RATIONALE OF THEISM 23 

afflictions with patience, when we have so good and 
sure a prospect of a perfect life hereafter. This view 
surely has more comfort in it than that of blank 
atheism, which offers no explanation of the ills of life 
now, and gives no promise of such explanation here- 
after. The best rule of life, after all, is the faith 
which leads us to rely on the vital and cheering 
promise of Sacred Writ: "All things work together 
for good to them that love God." 



II 

THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE * 

Ever and anon an uncertain word is said or written 
relative to the infallible character of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures. Sometimes this doubtful sound comes from an 
unexpected quarter, and for that reason creates, all 
the more, a feeling of solicitude. If we do not to-day 
have a "sure word of prophecy/' we are certainly in 
a most deplorable condition, after all the centuries of 
proclaiming the gospel and founding churches thereon ; 
then, indeed, we feel like exclaiming, "There is nothing 
sure and reliable under the sun." 

We desire to address ourself to the vital question 
of Biblical inspiration, not so much in the style of 
erudition as in a plain, matter-of-fact way, so that the 
layman as well as the trained and technical scholar can 
understand. Nor shall we quote a great deal from 
the theologians on this doctrine, but shall endeavor to 
elucidate it, as far as may be, in our own way and 
from our own point of view, our only purpose being 
to show how we have arrived at intellectual and 
spiritual composure, in the earnest hope that others 
may derive some help from the presentation. 

It is sometimes said that men undertake to discuss 
such doctrines as the one under consideration, while 
they are not versed in philosophy and do not 
even know how to use philosophical terms correctly. 

* This chapter deals rather with the rationalistic than the 
purely skeptical condition of mind. However, it is hoped that 
the skeptic will also find it of value in pointing him to the 
way of assurance. 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 25 

Perhaps so! But to make this criticism is at least 
an assumption of superiority on the part of the crit- 
ics that is hardly consistent with Christian humility; 
and thus, while it gives offense, it utterly fails to con- 
vince. Sometimes, too, the person who pretends to 
so much knowledge of philosophy and such refined 
nicety of discrimination himself, succeeds only in 
stirring up a cloud of dust when he undertakes to ex- 
plain his position on profound and vital questions. 
Moreover, the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures has so many practical aspects that it were a pity 
if men must have vast erudition in order to have 
a right to form an opinion regarding it. We believe, 
therefore, that this doctrine may be so stated, and the 
arguments so presented, that persons of fair intelli- 
gence can at least understand what the writer means, 
even if every one cannot accept his conclusions. 

Is a definition of Biblical inspiration possible? 
The negative is often maintained. We wonder 
whether it will be regarded as a piece of presumption 
should we attempt a definition. We do not hope to 
explain the mystery of inspiration, any more than we 
can explain any other mystery, but it does seem 
to us that a clear and concise statement of the doctrine 
may be made. Therefore, we would humbly submit 
the following: 

Biblical inspiration is the act of God by which 
He so moved upon the minds of the writers of the 
Sacred Scriptures that they recorded precisely 
what He desired to have recorded. 

We shall proceed to defend and elaborate this defi- 
nition. First, it asserts the perfect superintendence 
of God in the making of the Bible — that is, the com- 
plete dominance of the divine or supernatural element, 
making the Bible a fully-inspired book and one that 
must be inerrant. Still, it allows ample scope for the 
human element, which is so obvious in the production 



26 THK RATION AI, TKST 

of the Bible. The inspired writers were not mere ma- 
chines. God made use of them as free agents and 
rational beings, permitting their various idiosyncrasies 
proper play, so that no two of them wrote in the same 
way, but each was master of his own peculiar style; 
yet in all this free use of the human element, God so 
moved and controlled and guided the writers that no 
errors were committed, and that a vast amount of 
divine revelation was imparted and recorded. Thus 
the whole Bible is inspired; not merely some parts of 
it, but all its parts, even to the sentences and words — 
that is, they are God-breathed; divinely revealed, 
when necessary; divinely controlled in all cases. 

We are well aware that illustrations are not proofs, 
but they open the windows and help to throw light 
on one's meaning, and in that way our Lord used 
them. For this purpose let us make use of an illus- 
tration from the school-room. The teacher sends his 
pupil to the blackboard to solve a difficult problem. 
The instructor stands behind the pupil and watches 
and guides the process from beginning to end. But 
he gives the pupil some liberty; permits him to write 
the characters in his own way, to carry forward the 
solution by his own mental efforts as far as he can; 
meantime the teacher guides, sometimes suggests, at 
other times imparts needed information; and all the 
while keeps the pupil from error. We do not offer 
this parable as a logical demonstration, but simply 
as an illustration to make clear our idea of God's 
method of inspiration. When we remember that God 
is often represented as our Teacher, and that Jesus is 
often called the Great Teacher, the parable does not 
seem to be inapt; it seems to be almost a case of 
"natural law in the spiritual world." All life is a 
school; all life has a pedagogic purpose. 

We hold to the dynamic theory of inspiration, in- 
cluding revelation, suggestion, and superintendence, 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 2J 

but in few, if any, cases pure mechanics. "For the 
prophecy came not in olden time by the will of man; 
but holy men of God spake as they w T ere moved by the 
Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. i. 21). But what is to be said 
about the "verbal theory"? We believe in that, too. 
"Every Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 
Tim. iii. 16, closest translation). However, in say- 
ing that we accept the "verbal" theory, we need to 
make an explanation. Our idea is not that God dic- 
tated every word and punctuation mark, giving the 
Biblical scribes no election in the style of presentation, 
but that He so guided and superintended their choice 
of language that they were kept from error and wrote 
what He desired recorded. Thus the very words of 
Scripture were all inspired — that is, God-breathed — 
though not all of them were necessarily dictated. If 
it were impossible to express the same thought in 
different ways, this concession might not be made; 
but since a thought may be set forth in a variety of 
phrases, a certain degree of individual liberty might 
well be granted to the several Biblical writers, thus 
accounting for the diversity of their style, and making 
them more than mere writing-machines. Even in the 
human world an intelligent secretary or stenographer 
may be so imbued with his employer's spirit and plans 
as to be able freely and correctly to express the lat- 
ter's thoughts on some matters of business, without 
direct dictation in every case. At the same time the 
secretary would be expressing his own thoughts, and, 
to some extent, in his own way, would he not? And 
so long as the employer would look over the document 
and put his seal and signature to it, it would be con- 
sidered correct, whether composed by direct dictation, 
or simply imbued with the spirit and purpose of the 
employer. In this way we have reason to believe that 
God employed His amanuenses to compose the Sacred 
Scriptures, dictating when necessary, simply imbuing 



2 8 THE RATION AI, TEST 

with the idea in other cases. By this view there is 
ample room for the play of the human element, and 
yet the inerrancy of the Holy Word is assured. 

It is well to distinguish between inspiration and rev- 
elation. The former includes the latter, but is a 
wider, a more generic term. You might say that rev- 
elation is one of the parts or species of inspiration. 
The Bible is all inspired, every line and word of it; 
all filled with and produced by the breath of God; 
but not everything in the Bible is supernaturally re- 
vealed. Take a concrete case as an example. The 
history of creation up to the making of a self-conscious 
man all had to be especially revealed by the Almighty, 
whether to Moses or the scribes who lived before his day, 
because there was no man in existence to observe the 
acts of creation in the prehistoric ages. On the other 
hand, when Moses wrote down the events' of the ex- 
odus from Egypt, events that were transpiring before 
his own eyes, there was no need of a special revela- 
tion to inform him of what was occurring. He simply 
needed to use his own powers of observation. And 
those powers were all God-given. But note carefully : 
what he wrote about such events was all inspired of 
God, who moved upon the historian's mind in such a 
way as to impel him to chronicle the things that God 
wanted to have inserted in the sacred record ; nothing 
being inserted that God did not desire there, nothing 
omitted that He wished to have included. 

Such is our view of Biblical inspiration. It is at 
least a stalwart view, and has given us much comfort 
and confidence. But can <such a theory be maintained 
on the ground of reason ? Perhaps not on the ground 
of reason pure and simple; yet we believe it can be 
rationally defended and upheld with more conviction 
and cogency than any other view. Right here is the 
place, perhaps, to deny the charge of "constructive 
rationalism," which is likely to be brought against any- 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 29 

one who attempts to uphold positive orthodoxy by 
a process of reasoning. We shall have to deny the 
imputation. We do not accept the Bible as an in- 
fallibly-inspired book because we have first reasoned 
the matter out and have solved every difficulty. We 
accept it by faith, and a faith, too, that we have good 
ground to believe has been implanted by a Power 
that is higher than mere human ratiocination. Once 
we did not believe the Bible to be God's Book ; now we 
do, with all our heart, and we repeat that we did not 
arrive at our present conclusions through a process 
of human intellection. Before we close this chapter 
we shall describe the pathway by which the doubter 
comes to believe the Scriptures to be God's infallible 
book. The process by which such faith is attained 
is something very different from the doctrine of inspi- 
ration objectively considered. 

However, though we are no "constructive rational- 
ist" — how can a man be a rationalist when he bows 
in full surrender to God's Word, and not to reason? 
— yet we believe our view to be reasonable, more readily 
defended than any other, and far less dangerous than 
the view which gives us an errant and only partially 
inspired Bible. God's Book does not condemn reason ; 
for it says: "Come now, saith the Lord, and let us 
reason together" ; and St. Peter goes so far as to 
admonish his readers to be "ready always to give an 
answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the 
hope that is in you, with meekness and fear." No; 
God does not condemn nor contemn reason ; He simply 
does not want us to place it above revelation. 

We can see no fault with Dr. Philippi's statement 
of the doctrine of inspiration when he says it is "that 
connection of the human will with the divine Spirit, 
through which the revelation of the former will be 
pure and uncorrupt as to the contents of the latter" — 
that is, if by the word "revelation" he means the en- 



30 THE RATIONAL TEST 

tire body of the Scriptures, and not only those matters 
that had to be supernaturally revealed. However, we 
regret to have to enter our protest against the follow- 
ing comments on this view by an American Lutheran 
writer : 

"If this view, combined with the closer psychological 
analysis of the older dogmaticians, be so developed as 
to include the full value of individual passages like 
2 Tim. iii. 16," etc.; "all modified by the actual con- 
dition of the Bible, with its various readings and 
verbal inaccuracies, whose occurrence by divine per- 
mission marks their non-essentiality, the limits of 
verbal inspiration will be fixed. With these deter- 
mined, the how of inspiration will be clearer, and its 
theanthropic character better defined, as divine in such 
a way that the truth of salvation is nowise injured, and 
human to such a degree in style, conception of indi- 
vidual writers, etc., that the reality of the Bible is not 
contradicted. The question of errancy will then like- 
wise receive its solution, as essential but not mechan- 
ically absolute." 

The language of this quotation is not quite lucid, 
and therefore it is difficult to point out the exact errors 
of statement. However, there are symptoms of a de- 
sire to go too far. When the writer speaks of "the 
actual condition of the Bible, with its various readings 
and verbal inaccuracies," he must be referring to the 
translations we have to-day and not to the original 
copies of the inspired penmen. But what confusion 
is this? Does he mean to include the translation and 
transcription of the Bible in his idea of inspiration? 
If he does, no wonder he can formulate no definition 
of the doctrine! He is undertaking an impossible 
task. Besides, we do not believe that anyone to-day 
thinks for a moment that the translators and copyists 
were infallibly inspired, however much he may be- 
lieve that God superintended their work. 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 3 1 

In the last sentence the writer says of "the question 
of errancy" that it is "essential but not mechanically 
absolute." We think there must have been a slip of 
the pen or the type in this sentence; the word "er- 
rancy" evidently ought to be "inerrancy." Then the 
meaning must be this : The inerrancy of the Bible is 
"essential, but not mechanically absolute." Here is 
confusion again. Does he mean the translations we 
have to-day, or the original autographs? In this sen- 
tence he seems to mean the latter; in the second sen- 
tence preceding, the former. If, however, he means 
the translations all through, he is trying to make out a 
difficult problem where there is none, for no one 
would contend for a moment that the translations are 
"mechanically absolute" — or, better, absolutely iner- 
rant. Still, we cannot help feeling that he really 
meant to say that the original documents of sacred 
Scriptures were not infallibly inspired throughout. 
In the main, he would say, they, the Scriptures, were 
all right — that is, so far as regards the "truth of sal- 
vation" — but in some other matters they may be 
faulty. This is the view that must be combated to- 
day with might and main, if we would preserve the in- 
tegrity of the sacred volume. 

If the original Scriptures were not inerrant, the 
whole record is rendered untrustworthy; you do not 
know what to believe and what to reject; the feeling 
of uncertainty at once becomes so great that you lose 
your spiritual power and unction, and can no longer 
look upon any portion of Scripture as the true and ab- 
solute Word of God. Then, too, instead of making 
God's Word the ultimate rule and standard, you must 
either make reason that standard, in which case you 
fall into rationalism; or else you must make subjective 
experience the arbiter, in which case you open the 
floodgates of false mysticism. Some men may be able 
to retain faith in an imperfectly inspired Bible, and 



32 THE RATION AI, TEST 

in the God and Saviour whom it imperfectly reveals, 
but most men cannot accomplish this mental and 
spiritual exploit. And, to our mind, it can be called 
nothing more nor less than an exploit. Men of prac- 
tical minds and hard heads will say: "If the Bible 
is mistaken on one point, it may be mistaken on many 
others, and therefore we cannot repose absolute confi- 
dence in any part of its record. " Shall we tell a min- 
ister how to deplete his congregation in a single year, 
and rob it of all faith and spiritual verve? Let him 
preach that the Bible is a fallible book; that it con- 
tains errors now, and always has. On the other hand, 
let a man of sense and spiritual force preach the gos- 
pel in a positive way, as if there were no doubt of its 
truth, and see how his church will grow ! It is a 
dangerous doctrine — this doctrine of an imperfectly 
inspired Bible. It depletes, enervates, destroys the 
faith of the people, as we have seen in more than one 
instance, and a doctrine that does that surely cannot 
be true and reasonable. 

Suppose there were errors in the original Scriptures, 
then who is to decide what is true and what is untrue ? 
How is the true to be separated from the untrue? 
What shall be the norm of judgment, and who shall be 
the judge? You must accept only that which appeals 
to reason — rationalism; or that which agrees with 
your experience — the destruction of the whole Bible 
history. You and I never experienced that Jesus 
was born in Bethlehem of Judea, or was laid in a 
manger, or that the angels sang to the shepherds on 
the first Christmas night, or that Jesus disputed with 
the doctors in the temple at the age of twelve, and a 
thousand other events recorded in the gospels! The 
historical and the spiritual portions of the gospels are 
so interblended that you cannot take away the one 
without rending the other into fragments. 

It has been said that the doctrine of Christ is pri- 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 33 

mary; the doctrine of inspiration secondary; and 
therefore you are to believe in an infallible Christ, but 
need not believe in an infallible Bible. Do men who 
speak and write in that way realize that the Christ 
they exalt is only an ideal Christ, and not the historic 
Christ ? How do we know anything about our Lord ? 
Where do we look for His portrayal as an infallible 
Saviour and Teacher? In only one book — the Bible. 
But suppose the Bible is not fully trustworthy ! How 
do you know, after all, that you have an infallible 
Lord? There are some things in this world that you 
cannot separate without dire and destructive results. 
Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen; separate 
them, and you no longer have water, but something 
entirely different. Separate Christ from the gospel 
that tells us all we know of Him, and you no longer 
have Christ — you have another kind of a being. 

We have also heard it said, "The Bible says, 'Believe 
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved; 5 
it does not say, 'Believe the Bible, and thou shalt be 
saved !' " This is a one-sided and narrowed inter- 
pretation of Scripture, and fails to take into account 
the whole analogy of faith. Jesus also said, "Repent, 
and believe the gospel/' What gospel? The gospel 
which He was preaching to them. Where have we 
to-day any record of that gospel save in the New Tes- 
tament ? Paul said that if even an angel from heaven 
should preach another gospel than the one he had 
preached, he should be anathema. Where do we learn 
what Paul's great gospel was, save in his epistles, 
linked with the records of the evangelists? Where 
do we find even the command, "Believe in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," except in the 
New Testament? Suppose we cannot be sure, after 
all, that the injunction is correct, is inspired of God, 
and not merely a human statement, what becomes of 
our faith? It is founded on the sand. Now that the 



34 THE RATIONAL TEST 

inspired penmen are dead, and we can no longer hear 
their voices, we must have a true and imperishable 
record of their teachings, or we cannot be certain what 
their gospel was. If that record is not in the New 
Testament, we have no such record, and are therefore 
out upon the sea of incertitude, without a chart or 

'°S P has been said that the "spiritual truths," or the 
"saving truths," of the Scriptures are infallible and 
inerrant, while other parts of even the original 
writings may have contained errors! By what right 
does any man make such a distinction ? Is there any 
warrant for it in God's Word? The trouble is, you 
cannot separate the saving truths from their historical 
setting by a sharp line of cleavage. Let us try it and 
see The gospel history tells us that Christ healed a 
man that had a palsied arm. What is the saving 
truth in that beautiful narrative? Suppose you deny 
its historical verity, what have you left? The gospel 
informs us that Christ fed five thousand persons in a 
miraculous way ; that He turned water into wine ; that 
He walked on the water ; that He raised the son of a 
widow from the dead; that He opened the eyes of 
blind Bartimeus, and so on. What are the saving 
truths in those narratives? Do you not see that you 
cannot separate a historical person from his history? 
The trouble with this partial-inspiration hypothesis is, 
when you come to apply it to concrete cases, it falls 
hapless and helpless to the ground. It is not a good 
working theory; it is not practical. If you discredit 
part of the gospel history, you discredit the entire rec- 
ord, and then you have no "saving truths" left. 

"But what have you to say about the errors of tran- 
scription and translation which are to be found in all 
the Bibles extant at the present day?" someone asks, 
with not a little concern. We have very little to say 
about them. They cause most of us little uneasiness. 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 35 

We cannot help feeling that it is proof of a rationalis- 
tic temper to become polemical in attempting to make 
much of those errors. It seems to arise from a desire 
to prove that, take it as you will, you cannot have a 
perfect revelation, an infallible book. We simply 
admit, as an honest investigator must, that some such 
errors have occurred in translating and transcribing 
the sacred records ; but we hasten at once to say that 
they are of such slight significance that not a single 
essential, vital, or important truth of the Word, histor- 
ical or spiritual, is affected one way or another by 
them ; nothing important even in the history is invali- 
dated, not one event lost that would add to the strength 
and power and completeness of the gospel. God has per- 
haps permitted such slight errors to occur to keep us 
busy finding out as near as may be what was the origi- 
nal text, to incite us to more diligent research into the 
deep things of His revelation. How much more the 
Bible is studied because we must search for the truth, 
and because we are impelled by the hope of finding it ! 
But you tell men that they cannot find the true Word 
of God with all their searching, because mistakes were 
made in the original autographs, and you cut the nerve 
of all activity in the way of striving for positive re- 
sults. 

Do you wonder why we are ready to admit the pres- 
ence of errors of copyists, while we will not concede 
that errors might have occurred in the original auto- 
graphs? We will tell you why. Because the church 
has for centuries been aware of the errors of tran- 
scription, and yet that knowledge has not destroyed 
or even weakened her faith in the infallible Word of 
God ; which is positive and prima facie proof that her 
faith can bridge over that slight difficulty. But what 
has always happened when the original Scriptures 
themselves have been looked upon as faulty? Let the 
history, of rationalism wherever it has gained foot- 



36 THE RATIONAL TEST 

hold tell the doleful story. It has meant an emascu- 
lated faith and a depleted spiritual life. 

A speaker once exclaimed: "You talk about the 
original autographs of the Scriptures! I don't know 
anything about them! I never saw them!" We can- 
not help wondering whether the speaker ever saw 
even the Codex Sinaiticus, or Codex Alexandrinus, or 
the original copies of Shakespeare's plays, or Virgil's 
or Homer's poems. Such an outburst is not even 
clever rationalism, for everyone knows that there 
must have been original autographs, or we could not 
have had copies of them. Those original documents, 
fresh from the pens of prophets, evangelists and 
apostles, were inerrantly inspired by the Holy Spirit, 
and have come down to us with a fidelity and integrity 
that point to God as their custodian. 

Should it be asked why the canon was ever closed, 
or was closed when it was, our reply would be : That 
is God's way. He created the world and all that is in 
it, then ceased creating, and began developing and un- 
folding. He created a human couple, then ceased 
creating human beings, and developed all others from 
the primitive pair. He sent Christ into the world, 
who "died once for all," and did not continue to make 
atonement for sin, but unfolded the spiritual potencies 
infused into the world by His coming and sacrificial 
work. So He gave the world an inspired canon, and 
when it was completed, He closed it and set it forth 
to be our guide until the next epoch in the earth's his- 
tory, which will be the millennium. Such are the ways 
of God, and they are wonderfully wise. A finished 
creation, a finished atonement, a finished Biblical can- 
on, but a continuous development — that is the divine 
modus operandi. What fault can rightly be found 
with it? 

As a sample of the methods of the negative criticism, 
we will cite a concrete case. In Matthew's gospel it 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE $7 

is said that two blind men were cured by Christ as He 
was departing from Jericho (Matt. xx. 29-34). The 
gospel of Mark says that there was only one blind 
man, namely, Bartimeus (Mark x. 46-52). Now, says 
the critic, the two accounts are irreconcilable, and 
therefore one or both of the evangelists must have 
made a mistake. We are far from ready to concede 
either the premise or the conclusion; but suppose for 
the moment that Matthew was in error; that he mis- 
took one blind man for two ; what will the world think 
of him as a witness and historian? If Matthew 
would make a blunder in so simple a matter, mistaking 
one blind man for two, how can we trust him when he 
describes weightier events ? How do we know that he 
did not commit many blunders when he described the 
passion and resurrection of our Lord? That is the 
way the practical man looks at the matter. The same 
difficulty occurs if you suppose that Mark mistook 
two blind men for one. So great a miracle as the heal- 
ing of the blind was performed; yet here are wit- 
nesses who are supposed to be partially inspired, but 
they are so careless or so inaccurate as not to know 
how many blind persons had their sight restored ! 

No ! no ! we can find a simpler and far less danger- 
ous explanation of these seemingly divergent narra- 
tives. It is this : Christ healed many blind men, as 
we know full well from the gospels. As He was going 
out of Jericho, He opened the eyes of blind Barti- 
meus, and Mark records that miracle, to give an ex- 
ample of Christ's wonderful works ; perhaps a little 
later He opened the eyes of two other blind men, and 
Matthew describes that miracle; thus both narratives 
are true, and neither evangelist made a mistake. Will 
someone exclaim against the "harmonists/' if we ex- 
plain the difficulty in that way? Why should he? 
Surely that explanation is just as reasonable as, and 
far less dangerous than, to admit that the inspired 
writers may have made a blunder. 



38 THE RATIONAL TEST 

It may be said that there are apparent contradictions 
in the Bible that cannot be harmonized, try as you will. 
Perhaps there are; but so many of these difficulties 
have given way before the efforts of reverent and en- 
lightened scholarship that we have good reason to be- 
lieve that there is no real contradiction in the few that 
remain and that additional light will resolve them in 
good time. For our own part we are glad to acknowl- 
edge our indebtedness to the harmonists, who have re- 
moved many an intellectual difficulty for us ; and, while 
they have not been able to say the final word — God 
only can do that — they have helped us not a little to 
see more and more clearly the "sweet reasonableness 
of the gospel/' 

The negative critics have so ofte/i been proved in 
error that we feel less and less confidence in their de- 
cisions as the years go by. Once they declared that 
Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because 
in his age the art of writing was unknown; now Dr. 
H. L. Sayce and other Egyptologists inform us that 
the golden age of Egyptian culture came before Moses, 
and explorers have discovered writing both in Egypt 
and Palestine that antedates Moses by many centuries. 
See the results of excavations in Babylon, Nineveh, 
and Nippur, by Dr. Hilprecht and others, all of them 
corroborating the Biblical record not only in its spirit- 
ual parts, but also in its historical parts. 

Let us go back now to our definition of inspiration. 
It gives room for the discrimination that, while every- 
thing in the Bible is God-breathed, not every assertion 
in the Bible is true. We hasten to explain. In the 
second chapter of Genesis the devil makes a declara- 
tion, but it is false, and Christ says the devil was a liar 
from the beginning, and is the father of lies. Now, 
of course, the devil was not divinely inspired ; but the 
narrator of the story was — so inspired that he set down 
the devil's lie correctly, just as God wanted it stated, 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 39 

to show that the evil one was an impostor. This rule 
of hermeneutics, that the writers of the Biblical books 
were inspired, but not necessarily all the characters 
therein portrayed, will help to resolve more than one 
difficulty. 

It is illogical to say that, if all parts of the Bible are 
equally inspired, all parts must be equally important. 
God's book of nature helps us to understand His book 
of revelation, and in many ways there is "natural law 
in the spiritual world," and the reverse, because God 
is Creator and Ruler in both spheres. God made both 
the air and the diamond. Yet no one would say that 
they are equally important, for the one is absolutely es- 
sential to human existence, while the other is only an 
amenity or ornanient. This is not merely an analogy ; 
it is the same law in both realms — the natural and the 
spiritual. 

Sometimes you hear men say that the Bible was not 
written to teach science. That is true when properly 
qualified, but it is not sweepingly true. The Bible was 
not meant to teach science as a scientific text-book, but 
even the lay mind can see that, wherever the Bible 
makes statements that belong to the scientific realm, its 
statements ought to be correct, to agree with what is 
known to be true in scientific research. For example, 
the Scripture teaches that God created the heavens 
and the earth. There, we maintain, it goes boldly into 
the domain of science, and announces likewise a phi- 
losophy of the universe. If it could be proved that the 
universe was not created, but has existed from eternity, 
the Bible would be proved to be scientifically erroneous. 
The converse is also true. Right here we desire to say, 
parenthetically, that we believe the Bible thus far has 
been proved to be scientifically correct in every state- 
ment, where the Bible is properly understood and the 
conclusions of science are assured. But this it not the 
pface to attempt a demonstration of this assertion; we 



40 THE RATIONAL TEST 

believe, however, that this position can be successfully 
maintained. 

Our Lutheran view of the Word of God as the chief 
means of grace must forever keep us true to the Sa- 
cred Scriptures as infallibly inspired. We do not be- 
lieve that God's grace comes to us without means, but 
through the Word, which also gives value and efficacy 
to the sacraments. In this way we are guarded from 
false mysticism, and are also kept evangelical. Now, 
if God's Word is the medium through which grace and 
truth come to us, must not the medium be a perfect 
one? If it were faulty, would not the communication 
likewise be faulty? 

It is useless to fling the epithet of "bibliolatry" at 
those who hold to this stalwart view of plenary inspira- 
tion. We may believe the Bible to be a perfect revela- 
tion in all its parts, and yet not worship it, just as we 
might believe the sun shining in the heavens to be a 
perfect sun, because God made it so, without the re- 
motest thought of falling down to worship the orb 
of day. No; we do not worship the Bible; we wor- 
ship the Triune God whom the Bible reveals. This is 
a distinction that is simple enough for any mind to 
grasp. 

Neither is it correct to assert that the doctrine of 
plenary inspiration is elevated by its adherents above 
the doctrine of Christ. We have before us a book on 
the life of George Washington. It is an excellent 
book, and sets forth a true biography of the "father of 
our country/' In paying that eulogium to the book, 
do we mean to say that we regard the book as of 
more importance than the person it delineates ? So we 
value the Bible as a perfect revelation of the perfect 
and infinite God who is the sole object of our trust 
and worship. A perfect book implies a perfect author, 
but the author goes before and is greater than his book. 

The last question to which we shall address ourself 



THE PLENARY INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 41 

in this chapter is this: How are skeptics to be con- 
vinced that the Bible is an inspired book? Is it by a 
mere process of reasoning? Can the unbeliever be 
changed into a sincere believer by a mere presentation 
of the arguments for an inspired Bible ? Our reply is 
in the negative. The doctrine of plenary inspiration 
is one thing, objectively considered; the method of 
bringing men to believe that doctrine is quite another. 
Because some men do not believe does not make the 
grace of God of none effect ; nor does it nullify the fact 
or doctrine of Biblical inspiration. 

We believe that men are often helped to a more 
favorable attitude toward the Bible by right and cogent 
reasoning, as they are by kindly treatment and gentle 
persuasion on the part of Christian people. Hence 
we would explain as many difficulties for the inquirer 
as time and ability would allow. But we would never 
for a moment presume to teach that positive and final 
assurance either of personal salvation or Bible truth 
can be wrought by <solely human treatment of any kind. 
God's Spirit must rivet conviction, must seal the truth, 
upon the mind and heart. The natural heart is not in 
a condition to receive the truth of God; it must be 
changed. The Psalmist prayed: "Open thou mine 
eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy 
law." Otherwise he would be blind to the beauty and 
truth of God's revelation. It is said of Christ in His re- 
lation to His disciples (Luke xxiv. 45) : "Then opened 
He their understanding that they might understand the 
Scriptures." He also promised to send them the Holy 
Spirit, who would "lead them into all truth." And 
Paul says (1 Cor. ii. 14) : "The natural man receiveth 
not the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are fool- 
ishness unto him; neither can he know them, because 
they are spiritually discerned." With all this agree the 
words of Christ: ''Except a man be born again (or 
from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God;" 



42 THE RATIONAL TEST 

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit." 

All of these passages show that it is the regenerated 
and enlightened man who believes, for even faith is the 
gift of God. Then how may the doubter become a be- 
liever? In only one way: "Ask, and ye shall re- 
ceive ;" "If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God, 
who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not ; and 
it shall be given unto him." So he must go to God and 
ask for the gift and witness of the Spirit, and when his 
prayer is answered, he will have assurance of truth, 
as well as of pardon and salvation. But where does 
he learn that assurance of truth is to be gained in that 
way? Where does he learn that the Spirit will come 
as the sure witness of truth? In the Bible. There- 
fore the Spirit operates through the Word, as well as 
corroborates and seals the Word. This is not making 
experience the final test, because the experience is 
wrought through the Word by the Spirit. Therefore 
the person who is converted and convinced in this 
way will always make the Word of God the final and 
infallible court of appeal. He will be saved from 
rationalism on the one hand, and from false mysti- 
cism on the other. He cannot put subjective experi- 
ence above the objective Word, simply because he 
knows that his experience is only a result and a testi- 
mony, not an arbiter and a test. He knows that, 
without the Word as an instrument, and the Holy 
Spirit as an agent, he never could have won peace and 
assurance. We contend, therefore, that this view of 
inspiration saves from rationalism, either constructive 
or destructive, and from all kinds of false illuminism. 



Ill 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY : A RATIONAL DOCTRINE 

The word "Trinity" does not mean merely three; 
it means three in one. Etymologically it consists of 
two Latin words, tres and unit as, "three" and "unity." 
The idea of the compound word will become clear 
if we hyphenate it, thus, tri-unity. An analysis of the 
word, therefore, gives us the idea or doctrine of three 
in one. 

Thus it will be seen that the word itself expresses 
the whole orthodox doctrine, asserting, first, the unity 
of God; second, the threefold character of His being. 
For this reason the word Trinitarian is a much better 
and broader word than the word Unitarian. The lat- 
ter narrows your conception to only one phase of the 
divine life, namely, the unity of the Godhead, and 
misses the multiple nature of that life; whereas the 
word Trinitarian includes the conception of both the 
unity and the diversity of God's being. You can de- 
pend upon it that the orthodox conception of Christian 
doctrine is always better and broader than heretical 
views, for it comprehends the whole teaching of the 
Holy Scriptures, and not merely a phase of it. 

Is the orthodox view of the doctrine of the Trinity 
reasonable? It shall be our purpose in this essay to 
try to prove that it is. 

You will observe that the reformers of the six- 
teenth century planted the confessions of the church 
on the statements of the old Nicene creed respecting 
the Holy Trinity. In this they were wise, for they 
thereby established a historical as well as a doctrinal 



44 THE RATIONAL TEST 

connection between the Protestant church and the 
ancient church, making the two an organic unity. No 
better or sounder statement of the doctrine of the 
Trinity was ever formulated than that of the Nicene 
creed as enlarged and enriched by the Council at Con- 
stantinople. What a sturdy warfare the church 
fathers waged in order to preserve the true doctrine 
to the church for all the ages to follow ! Alexander 
and Athanasius — they were indeed heroes of the faith, 
keen of intellect, loyal to the Scriptures, willing to 
suffer exile, persecution, and even death, rather than 
deny the faith. Have you ever tried to imagine what 
would have been the fate of the Christian church had 
the views of Arius and his sympathizers prevailed in- 
stead of those of Athanasius in the epoch-making 
controversies of the fourth century? 

At the Council of Nice the fate of the church 
seemed to hang on a little Greek letter — iota. The 
Arians proposed that the word homoiousios be used in 
describing the relation of the Father and the Son in 
the Godhead; the orthodox party contended for the 
word homoousios. The difference between the two 
words was simply the tiny letter i, or iota in the Greek. 
The heretics wanted the letter inserted, the orthodox 
party wanted it omitted. There the battle raged, 
there the issue hung. Some superficial person may 
exclaim : " What narrowness ! what a disposition to 
split hairs, to contend over one small letter !" 

Do not be too quick to condemn the great men of 
the past. And, besides, if the Athanasians were big- 
oted in stickling for the omission of the letter, the 
Arians were no less bigoted in contending for its in- 
sertion. There is such a thing as heretical bigotry as 
well as orthodox bigotry. The difference between 
that tiny letter inserted or omitted is the difference be- 
tween Unitarianism and Trinitarianism ; nay, more, it is 
the difference between the Son of God robbed of His 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 45 

deity and the Son of God possessed of His deity ; and 
that is the difference between finity and infinity. With 
the letter left in the word the Arians would have com- 
pelled the council to say that the Father and the Son 
were only of similar substance, and therefore the Son 
might have been simply a creature in the image of 
God, for even the spirit of man is probably of similar 
substance with that of the Godhead. But better 
counsel prevailed, and the letter was omitted, asserting 
the Father and the Son to be the same substance, which 
view ascribes proper deity to the Son of God. Thus 
the orthodox doctrine was triumphant, and Christ re- 
mained enthroned. 

Now look around you and see what a small and 
feeble folk the Unitarians are, and have been, in fact, 
all along the history of the Christian church. Com- 
pare their lack of evangelistic and missionary enter- 
prise with the strength and activity of the orthodox 
churches of the world, and you will begin to see what 
a dire misfortune would have befallen the church and 
the world had Arianism won the victory in the ancient 
Councils of Nice and Constantinople. Rob Christ of 
His deity, and you introduce a fatal weakness into 
your doctrinal system; and an emasculated doctrinal 
system will beget an emasculated church, as surely as 
effect follows cause. 

One of the clearest and most discriminating state- 
ments of the doctrine of the Trinity is found in the 
first article of the Augsburg Confession, the creed of 
the Evangelical Lutheran Church. It is as follows: 

"Our churches with one accord teach that the de- 
cree of the Council of Nice, concerning the unity of 
the divine essence and concerning the three persons, 
is true, and ought to be confidently believed, viz. : 
that there is one divine essence, which is called and 
is God, eternal, incorporeal, indivisible, infinite in 
power, wisdom and goodness, the Creator and Pre- 



46 THE RATIONAL TEST 

server of all things visible and invisible; and yet that 
there are three persons, who are of the same essence 
and power, and are co-eternal, the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Ghost. And the term person they use in the 
same sense in which it is employed by ecclesiastical 
writers on this subject : to signify, not a part or qual- 
ity of something else, but that which subsists of it- 
self." 

This article asserts two things relative to the God- 
head — the unity of the divine essence and the sub- 
sistence of the three persons ; that is, that God is both 
one and three. That, we take it, is the Biblical doc- 
trine, the one which obtains in the orthodox camp, 
and we shall proceed to present it. 

Right here is the proper place to guard against mis- 
apprehension. The word person must be carefully 
defined, or we shall go hopelessly astray, and become 
involved in a fatal absurdity. We cannot help think- 
ing it unfortunate that the word person was intro- 
duced into the western version of the creed. It was 
selected because there was really no better word in the 
Latin to express the thought of the Nicene creed. 
The Latin word persona, from which we derive our 
English word person, was employed to translate the 
Greek word hupostasis, which was used in the dog- 
matic statements of the Nicene Trinitarians. The 
Greek word was an excellent one, because it means 
a subsistence, a mode of being; and that was precisely 
what the Nicene fathers meant by asserting that God 
was triune; they meant that He had a threefold mode 
of existence or being, while He was one in essence and 
personality. 

Therefore, when we speak of three persons in the 
Godhead, you are not to think of God as composed of 
three distinct and separate personalities, such as three 
human individuals are, but that He possesses a three- 
fold life, making the one divine person. This dis- 



THE DOCTRINE OK THE TRINITY 47 

tinction will help us to fend off the charge of absurdity 
that has often been heaped upon the Trinitarian 
view. All the ridicule heaped upon the orthodox 
doctrine has arisen from a misunderstanding or a su- 
perficial conception. Had unbelievers studied the or- 
thodox doctrine profoundly, and taken pains to dis- 
cover what it really is, they never would have laughed 
the great philosophers of the church to scorn or held 
them up to popular view as little better than driveling 
imbeciles. 

Let us give an example. Some years ago, when 
some of us were very young men, a certain noted 
skeptic was wont to declare that the orthodox theo- 
logians of the church did not have sense enough to 
do the simplest sum in arithmetic. The common 
school-boy he said, would add three ones together, and 
would never fail to get three for the result. "One plus 
one plus one equals three !" he cried. But the theo- 
logians did not even know how to do this primary sum 
in addition, for they would solve the problem thus: 
"One plus one plus one equals one! 1 ' Then he would 
laugh broadly, and the audience would burst into loud 
applause. 

What lack of depth ! What shallowness of thought 
and poverty of investigation! The flouter and his 
auditors did not even take the trouble to find out 
what the profound scholars of the church meant by 
the doctrine of the Trinity. Might they not have 
taken it for granted that no set of men would proclaim 
such a preposterous notion as that three ones added 
together would make only one? It should have been 
a foregone conclusion that, if honest and scholarly 
men declared that God was both a unity and a trinal- 
ity, they must have had some convincing reason for 
their convictions. Otherwise they would surely have 
known that they were simply proclaiming their own 
lack of sanity, and could not hope to see their doc- 
trines accepted. 



48 THE RATIONAL TEST 

Had the scoffer looked a little deeper into the state- 
ments and arguments of the Nicene Trinitarians and 
all their followers, he would have discovered that they 
never for a moment held to the doctrine of a mathe- 
matical Trinity, but a spiritual or mental Trinity. 
And that makes all the difference between sanity and 
insanity. 

More than that, the giber can be floored even by the 
use of his own method of illustrating. In spite of all 
his mathematics, we can add three together and get 
only one for the result. We can even do more than 
that ; we can add five together and make the sum only 
one. Take the five fingers of the hand (including the 
thumb) ; count them one by one, beginning with the 
small finger and ending with the thumb, thus : one 
plus one plus one plus one plus one equals (folding 
them all together) one; five fingers, one hand; five 
in one respect, one in another respect. That illus- 
trates the tri-unity in the Godhead — three in one re- 
spect, one in another respect. That is what orthodox 
thinkers have always meant by the Trinity. They 
have never supposed, much less advocated, that God 
is both three and one in the same respect. Nay, He 
is one in essence, three in subsistence; one in His 
individuality, three in the modes of His being. The 
notion of a mechanical, mathematical, or materialis- 
tic Trinity has never been held by one intelligent or- 
thodox theologian; therefore, to deride such an absurd 
doctrine is simply to set up a man of straw for the 
purpose of demolishing it. 

Theologians never would have developed the doc- 
trine of the Trinity had it not been taught in the Holy 
Scriptures. On the one hand, they learned from 
their study of the Bible that God is declared to be one 
God ; on the other hand, they discovered no less clearly 
that the Bible teaches that God is three, Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit. The unity of God is taught in many 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 49 

passages, and the whole teaching of the Bible en- 
forces the doctrine of monotheism. For example, the 
Scripture says, "I, the Lord thy God, am one God;" 
"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only 
shalt thou serve !" No less easy is it to adduce Scrip- 
tural proof that there is a plurality of life in God — 
that, though He is a unit, He is not a monotone in the 
constitution of His being. The first name given to 
the Creator in the Bible is Elohim, which is plural, 
while the verb is singular, indicating a plurality of ex- 
istence and a unity of essence. 

The Father is so often called God that we need not 
cite passages to prove His deity. The Son is also 
depicted as divine. Analyze the first verse of the 
first chapter of John: "In the beginning was the Lo- 
gos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was 
God;" then a few verses afterwards it is said: "And 
the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us," prov- 
ing beyond a doubt that by the Logos the writer meant 
Jesus Christ. Have you ever stopped to meditate on 
that profound verse from St. John's gospel? "In 
the beginning was the Word" — the eternity of the Son 
of God, who was already in the beginning, and there- 
fore could Himself have had no beginning. "And 
the Word was with God" — a distinction between the 
Father and the Son, indicating that in some mysterious 
respect they are not identical. "And the Word was 
God" — proving that in another respect Father and 
Son are the same. 

The deity of the Holy Spirit is also plainly taught 
in the Scriptures, for the baptismal formula places 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost on an equality. The 
numerous passages in which the Holy Spirit is called 
God, and in which divine attributes, works, and wor- 
ship are ascribed to Him, need not be cited here, as 
any Bible student can connote them for himself. Our 
purpose is to show that the teachings of the Holy 
4 



50 THK RATIONAL TEST 

Scriptures are in harmony with the verdict of reason. 

Let us pause here for a moment to consider the 
significance of the fact that the Bible teaches the tri- 
unity of God. Shall we question the sanity of the 
writers of the Bible, and say that they taught flat 
contradictions, so that a child could see that their testi- 
mony was invalidated? Is the Bible a book of that 
kind? When you remember its influence on the 
world, how it has changed the currents of history, 
and won the homage of many of the wisest and best 
men of all time, does it seem as if it were an inane 
and stupid book? We think not. Therefore if a 
book like the Bible teaches both the oneness and the 
threeness of God, the strong presumption is that the 
statements are not made without reason, and are 
worthy of the most careful and acute consideration. 
At all events, they are entitled to respectful treatment. 

Now, the problem before us is this: Is it possible 
to explain the doctrine of the Trinity in such a way 
that it will commend itself to reason? Perhaps we 
shall see, after due thought, that if there is a God, He 
must have a trinal character and could not be a bald 
monad. We will therefore examine what may be 
called the ontological argument for the Trinity. God 
is mind, or, as the Scriptures put it, God is a Spirit. 
The Scriptures also teach that man was made in the 
image of God. That image must consist in the men- 
tal or spiritual nature of man, not in his physical na- 
ture, for God is incorporeal. We are not now assum- 
ing that the Biblical account of the creation of man 
in God's image is true, but are simply intent on try- 
ing to show that, if it is true, it is rational; and if it 
is found to be rational, it will not be very difficult to 
believe that it is true. 

When we come to analyze the mental constitution 
of man, we find that certain processes of life are nec- 
essary to make him a self-conscious being such as we 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 5 1 

know, him to be. What are the constitution of mind 
and the process of thought that are necessary to make 
a self-conscious being? Let us see whether it does 
not involve a trinity. To do this we must enter the 
realm of abstract thought. First, you have a mind; 
think of that for a moment — a mind. Now go a step 
further ; you can think of your mind — that is, you can 
make your mind its own object; you can, as it were, 
set your mind out before you, or, in other words, 
objectify it. What have you now? You have two — 
your mind as both subject and object. But you are 
not yet self-conscious. A third process or act or 
mode of being is necessary. The subject and object 
must know each other as one and the same entity. 
There is such mutual cognition. Now you have a 
self-conscious being. The circle is complete. Three 
processes were necessary to bring about self-con- 
sciousness, but more are not needed; indeed, if you 
stop to think about it, every additional step in the 
process is superfluous. 

Now apply this threefold mode of life to God, who 
is the eternal Mind or Spirit: First, He is; then He 
objectifies Himself; then He recognizes both subject 
and object as Himself, one and the same Being. 
Three modes of subsistence; one entity, one essence, 
one God. This is not merely an illustration; it is a 
law of mental being — ontology; we do not see how 
God could be God in any other way. 

But the analogy may be carried further. God 
posits or objectifies Himself; the object is therefore 
begotten — the Son begotten of the Father, according 
to the Scriptures and all the ecumenical creeds. Then 
the subject cognizes the object as Himself and the ob- 
ject cognizes the subject as Himself. Procession — 
the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the 
Son. Moreover, both the begetting and the proceed- 
ing must be eternal if God is an eternal, self-conscious 



52 THE RATIONAL TEST 

and perfect Being. Therefore the statement of the 
church's confessions that Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost are co-eternal is correct. 

But that is not all. As only one objectification in 
the life of God is necessary to make Him a self-con- 
scious and perfect Being, we see why the Scriptures 
call Christ His "only begotten Son/' It is also easy 
to understand that God, making Himself His own 
object, would love that object, which corroborates the 
Scripture in which the Father says, "This is my be- 
loved Son." It is evident, too, that the mode of the 
divine existence in which God makes Himself the ob- 
ject is the proper mode in which He would become in- 
carnate in the person of Jesus Christ. In His mode 
of life as subject He could not do so, for in that mode 
He is the ground and source of all acts and modes of 
being, even of the quality of self-consciousness. Here 
you have the key to Christ's enigmatical saying, "My 
Father is greater than I," connoted with another asser- 
tion which seems to be in direct contradiction, "I and 
my Father are one." The apparent discrepancy is 
solved by the ontological argument. As the begetter, 
the Father is greater than the Son; while as being, 
essence, entity, the two are one and the same. You 
see, therefore, why the Nicene theologians, who looked 
profoundly into the very nature of being itself, would 
not admit that the Father and Son were merely of like 
substance, but insisted that they were the same sub- 
stance. It had to be homoousion, not homoiousion; 
the iota had to stay out. 

The third mode of the divine existence by which 
the union and identity of subject and object are recog- 
nized will explain what Paul means when He says 
that the Spirit searches the deep things of God; also 
when He informs us that it is only the Spirit that 
knows the mind of God. The third hypostasis is the 
mode or process by which God knows Himself, and 



THE DOCTRINE OK THE TRINITY 53 

as He must know Himself perfectly, that knowing 
must be infinitely penetrating — in short, must be the 
knowing of the deep things of God. Since He is 
the revealer of God to Himself, it is also logical and 
consistent that the Spirit should be the inspirer and re- 
vealer of superhuman knowledge among men and the 
guide in the interpretation of God's Word. How ap- 
propriate, too, that the Spirit, which completes the act 
of self-knowing in the life of God, should be the mem- 
ber of the Trinity who bears witness in the hearts of 
believers that they are the children of God! The 
same Spirit who causes the Son to know Himself as 
the Son of the Father is simply carrying out His di- 
vine and eternal function when he bears similar testi- 
mony in the hearts of believers. The nature of being 
also demands that He — the Holy Spirit — should be the 
implanter of the regenerate life in men's hearts. Do 
you ask why ? Because He proceeds from the Father 
and the Son, and therefore imparts to believers the 
fullness of the life of God, which would not be true 
were either the Father or the Son in His own distinct 
character to perform the office of regeneration. 

With this ontological conception in mind it is not 
difficult to believe the credal statement that "there is 
one divine essence which is called and is God, eternal, 
incorporeal, indivisible, infinite in power, wisdom and 
goodness, the Creator of all things visible and in- 
visible; and yet there are three persons (hypostases), 
who are of the same essence and power, and are co- 
eternal, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." 
In this analysis the subject, the object, and the cog- 
nizer can all be distinguished, and each performs His 
peculiar function to complete the circle of being, and 
yet all are one and the same in essence and personality. 
There are not three beings ; only one. There are 
three modes, yet each is God in the totality of His 
being. The three added together make only one. 



54 THE RATIONAL TEST 

Keeping this analysis in mind, read over again the 
first verse of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning 
was the Word, .and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God."* 

The trinal nature of God is real — inner reality. 
God is not merely an economic Trinity. The Sabel- 
lians and Monarchians in the ancient church, like some 
theologians of the present day, held this idea of the 
Trinity ; that it is not a real distinction in the inner life 
of God, but merely His method of revealing Himself. 
They maintained that God, in His real character, is 
a pure monad, but when He manifested Himself in 
redemption, He appeared as a triad, Father, Son and 
Holy Spirit. If we will but stop to think deeply, this 
view cannot be entertained for a moment; for if God 

* After the foregoing had been written, we read with much 
pleasure and profit Dr. Milton Valentine's statement and elab- 
oration of this mode of argument for the purpose of estab- 
lishing the inner reality of the Divine Trinality. (See his 
"Christian Theology," Vol I., pages 314-319.) We have also 
read and carefully weighed his criticism on this process. 
However, we are constrained to say that the criticism is not 
convincing to our mind ; for in the infinitely complete life of 
God the process of self-consciousness must be absolutely per- 
fect, so that each of the three hypostases must stand out 
distinctly — so distinctly, indeed, that we may say that God 
is unipersonal in one respect and tripersonal in another re- 
spect. At all events, in summing up the matter, Dr. Valentine 
admits the value of the argument, by saying : "The effort of 
theology, however, in framing this offered explanatory illus- 
tration is not to be looked upon as without value. For it 
exhibits a trinal reality of thought-life which helps us to 
approach the conception of Triune Being. While it does not 
exhibit an instance of essential tripersonal Being, and thus 
form a demonstration of its truth, it nevertheless does offer 
three thought-centers, upon the basis or in view of which 'it 
does not seem impossible,' as Dr. Clarke well expresses it, that 
in God there should be, in each of them, the further reality of 
self-conscious life and action." In granting that much, the 
author is inclined to believe that the whole argument is 
conceded. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY 55 

revealed Himself as a Trinity, but was not so in 
reality, He gave the world a false view of Himself; 
He was not what He seemed to be. No ; the absolute 
veracity of God compels us to believe that He affords 
a true revelation of Himself in every act of history, 
whether in creation, providence, or redemption. 

In the deepest needs of human experience we find 
strong presumptive evidence that God is tripersonal 
in His nature. We feel the need of God as a Father; 
a Father who will love us, care for us, teach us pa- 
tiently as a father would. So God is clearly revealed 
in the Scriptures as our Father in heaven, thereby 
meeting this requirement of the human soul. But we 
likewise feel that we have sinned against our Father 
and deserve punishment at His hands ; that we cannot 
save ourselves, or make atonement for our own sins, 
or render satisfaction to justice for the outrage we 
have committed against God's holy law. Therefore 
we feel the need of a Saviour, one who can render 
satisfaction, who can reconcile us to an offended God, 
and rescue us from our dire distress. This need of 
our common humanity is met in the Son of God as our 
Saviour and Redeemer; and our sin is so great that 
we feel that only a God, a divine Saviour, can succor 
us from our lost and desperate condition. 

Still, this is not enough. We need a God who is 
still more than a Father and a Redeemer ; we need to 
get sin rooted out of our natures, where it has become 
imbedded; we need also to have a new life implanted 
within us, suppressing the old sinful life and enduing 
us with moral power to live according to the law 
of righteousness. Hence we feel our need of God as 
our regenerator and sanctifier, the very function which 
the Scripture tells us the Holy Spirit is sent to per- 
form. Do we need more? Nothing whatever. The 
circle of the trinity of human need is complete, and 
finds its complement in the triune character of God. 



56 THE RATIONAL TEST 

Another argument for the multiple life of the God- 
head is all but convincing; we refer to the craving 
of the human mind for diversity, variety. True, we 
may like to see a straight line, but we find more beauty 
in a curved line. We scarcely admire an angle; we 
admire a circle more, and a parabola still more. A 
level plain may please the eye for awhile, but how 
quickly you tire of the monotony, and relish the pic- 
turesqueness of the hills and mountains ! A mono- 
tone in reading is intolerable for more than a few 
seconds. Hence God in nature has given infinite va- 
riety, no two trees or leaves or grass-blades alike. 
Carrying this thought up into the life of God — would 
you want to think of the divine existence as a dreary 
monotone, a bald, unrelieved monad? Introduce the 
conception of a divine Trinity, and what a refreshing 
rebound the mind at once experiences ! God's life is 
diversified. First, He is a Trinity as the essential 
constitution of His being, and, besides, He has under- 
standing, susceptiblity and will, with all His infinitely 
glorious attributes, making Him a God whom we can 
enjoy, worship and study throughout the cycles of 
eternity. Such a view is inspiring. 

Thus we observe that the Biblical doctrine of the 
Trinity is corroborated by reason, experience, and the 
natural craving of the human soul. There are, there- 
fore, no intellectual obstacles in the way of accepting 
this profound and precious doctrine. 



IV 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN S CREATION I IS IT MYTH, 
ALLEGORY, OR HISTORY? 

The Bible is a realistic book. Its narrative por- 
tions carry an air of verisimilitude that — to the 
writer's mind, at least — is compelling. They read like 
history and as if they were intended by the writers 
to be accepted as literal fact. True, there are both 
allegory and parable in the Bible. Isaiah's parable 
about the vineyard is plainly a parable; no fairly in- 
telligent reader will mistake it for anything else. The 
same may be said of the prophet Nathan's beautiful 
and forcible story of the pet ewe lamb, when he de- 
sired to send the arrow of conviction into King 
David's heart for having stolen Uriah's wife. Read 
the parables of our Lord, and you have no difficulty 
in at once distinguishing their parabolic character. 

However, when you read the narrative portions of 
the Old and New Testaments, you feel at once that 
you have moved into a different atmosphere — not the 
allegoric or parabolic, but the historical. Let any per- 
son who is uninfluenced by theological and scientific 
prepossessions sit down to peruse the first and second 
chapters of Genesis, and we feel safe in asserting that 
he will recognize this patent fact — that he is reading 
a narrative that was meant by its writers to be ac- 
cepted as literal history. If it is not history its com- 
posers must have purposely deceived their readers. 
They could not have been ignorant and credulous men, 
who believed the story merely because it was handed 
down by tradition; for the record has too much 



58 THE RATIONAL TEST 

depth, too much beauty, too much logical harmony ; 
too much agreement with the real facts of nature and 
human life, to be accredited to a set of gullible and 
childish compilers. 

There are two records of man's creation in the 
opening chapters of the Bible. The first — that found 
in Gen i. 26 and 2J — is general; the second, found in 
Gen ii. 7-25, is more specific and detailed. The two 
accounts are in perfect agreement, giving no evidence, 
so far as we can discover, of two different original 
narratives. Their natural harmony will be seen as 
we proceed with our discussion. 

Let us look at the first account of man's creation — 
Gen. i. 26 and 2J : "And Elohim said, Let us make man 
in our image, after our likeness : and let him have do- 
minion over the fish of the sea And Elo- 
him created man in His own image, in the image of 
Elohim created He him; male and female created He 
them." 

That is most significant and impressive language. 
Is it history, or legend, or allegory? It surely reads 
like history — at least, as if it were intended for his- 
tory. When we come to consider the more detailed 
recital of man's creation in the second chapter of 
Genesis, we shall endeavor to set forth the unreason- 
able and tragical consequences of supposing that this 
narrative is either legendary or allegorical. Just now 
we are concerned to prove that the story in the first 
chapter of Genesis tallies with facts as we know them 
to-day, and is therefore rational history. 

Man made in the image of God ! What a noble 
statement! What a thrilling truth, if it is true! If 
you reflect for a moment, you will note that the more 
exalted a man's idea is of the nature and design and 
destiny of man, the more he will be inclined to accept 
this narrative as a veritable statement of man's origin. 
On the other hand, the more debased a man's concep- 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN'S CREATION 59 

tions of the human family are, the more he will ques- 
tion and flout the statement that man was made in the 
image of God. That fact in itself ought to dispose 
one to accept the more worthy view of man's genesis. 
Is proof needed of the assertion that the scoffers 
at the Biblical view of man's origin are those thinkers 
who hold low and groveling conceptions of his nature 
and destiny? We would refer the reader to Haeckel's 
latest work, "The Riddle of the Universe," in which 
he speaks of the ideas of God, freedom, and immor- 
tality, as "the three great buttresses of superstition," 
which it is the business of science to destroy. (Our 
quotation is taken from Dr. James Orr's excellent 
work entitled "God's Image in Man," a volume of sig- 
nal worth.) Suppose those three great conceptions 
were taken out of the mind and heart of man, the 
ideas of God, freedom, and immortality, what would 
be left in his nature to lift him above the brutes? Is 
it not a base and groundling view of man? We re- 
peat, and we would make it as emphatic as possible, 
that the scientific men who entertain such debased 
views of man are the ones who scout the Genetical ac- 
count of man's origin; whereas those thinkers who 
cherish exalted ideas of man's beginning, nature and 
destiny are ever quite ready to accept the Biblical 
narrative. Depend upon it, if the modern monistic 
and materialistic theories were to prevail man would 
speedily be robbed of the divine image, de-humanized 
and brutalized. It is not only a degrading view of 
man; it is a fatally one-sided and defective philoso- 
phy, simply because it does not take into account the 
most exalted and worthy facts relative to man's con- 
stitution. Another quotation from Haeckel will 
plainly show why he did not accept the Bible doctrine 
of man's creation in the divine image : "Sufficient for 
us, as an incontestable historical fact, is the important 
thesis that man descends immediately from the ape, 



60 THE RATIONAL TEST 

and secondly from a long series of lower/ vertebrates. " 
No wonder! No wonder! This view of the human 
family is surely "of the earth, earthy/' There is 
nothing heavenly and uplifting about it. How, then, 
did man ever come to have the heavenly and ennobling 
thoughts that pulsate within him? Do such concep- 
tions spring up out of the ground? 

On the other hand, looking at man as he is to-day 
in his best moral frame, we find that he has exalted con- 
ceptions of God, worships Him, holds most happy and 
intimate communion with Him — or, at least, he thinks 
he does. He regards the Almighty as a personal, loving 
and righteous Being, infinite in all His attributes. 
Now, if man came up by a process of natural evolu- 
tion, how did he come to have such profound and ex- 
alted views of God? If there is no God who made 
man in His own image, we have here a case of water 
rising higher than its source — mere material substance 
evolving a high spiritual conception. You cannot 
account for man's mental and spiritual conceptions 
by mere material evolution. However, suppose for 
a moment, for the sake of argument, that the Bible 
record is true — that man really was made in the im- 
age of God — how easy it is to account for his initial con- 
ception of God, his confidence in Him, his love for Him, 
his fellowship with Him ! In short, the present spirit- 
ual status of man is simply a logical outcome, if the 
Biblical representation is true. Therefore the Bible 
story agrees with the facts about man as we know 
him to-day, and that is a powerful, if not an entirely 
convincing, argument that the Biblical record is as true 
as it is rational. 

An analysis of the Biblical idea of the divine image 
in man will add cumulative force to the reasoning. 
In what does the divine image consist ? First, we find 
that man is a mental being as well as a physical. In 
his very consciousness he feels that he is mental. Con- 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN'S CREATION 6 1 

scious of distinctly mental acts, he does not believe 
that he is merely a highly developed physical organ- 
ism. If he is, that organism has told him a lie, and 
has continued to tell it since the first dawn of con- 
scious human intelligence. If material organization 
— and that in its highest development — bears so 
equivocal and false a testimony as to make a man 
think he has a mind or soul when he has not, then its 
testimony is worse than worthless and we can find 
no basis of fact in all the world. Material evolution 
is a poor philosophy; it rests on slender proof and does 
not account for many of the most patent facts of the 
world, of human life and experience. It is not a good 
working hypothesis. 

On the other hand, suppose that the Bible doctrine 
is true, that God is a Spirit and man is a spirit too, the 
latter a finite copy of the former, who is infinite; do 
you not see, then, how easy it is to account for the fact 
that man's consciousness tells him that he is a mind 
or spirit? You have in that view an adequate cause 
to account for the known effect. And this leads us to 
say that, in our view, the divine image in man consists, 
first of all, in the fact that in his mental constitution 
he is composed of similar essence with his Creator. 
This could not be said of the material creation up to 
the time when man was given his being. Of no ob- 
ject, mineral, vegetable, or animal, was it said that it 
was made in the image of God ; but now, when God is 
going to make a different order of being, He gives 
him a mental or spiritual nature of the same kind of 
essence as Himself. Therefore it might be said, 
without irreverence, that man is God finite, and that 
God is man infinite. While in his spiritual constitu- 
tion man is not of the same substance as God — not 
homooiision, as the Logos is ; yet he is of similar sub- 
stance — homoiousion — that is, man is spiritual sub- 
stance like His Creator. Therefore fellowship of the 



62 THE RATIONAL TKST 

most real and intimate kind can subsist between God 
and man. Such fellowship does exist to-day; there- 
fore, again, the Biblical portrayal is a rational account 
of man's origin. 

Coming to the psychological constitution of man, we 
find the same rhythm between the facts and the Bible 
story. Man is a psychical trinity, his mental being 
composed of intellect, susceptibility and will. And 
these are not divisions of his mind, as if it were a 
material substance and could be separated into parts; 
but his whole mind is intellect, his whole mind sus- 
ceptibility, his whole mind will, these different pow- 
ers being in reality the threefold constitution and life 
of man's mental being. Now you cannot form any 
other conception of God, if you believe in His personal 
existence at all, than that He, too, is a triune Being of 
the same kind, only infinite in His perfections. When 
you look at the universe, and note its wonderful char- 
acter, its wise adaptation of means to ends, you again 
attain to the conception that its Creator, if it was cre- 
ated, must have the same mental constitution — intel- 
lect, susceptibility, and will. Here again we have the 
present-day fact that God and man are living in close 
and happy relationship accounted for, if we accept the 
Bible story as veracious. 

Going farther into ontology, in the very constitution 
of man as a self-conscious personality we find evi- 
dences of a trinity of life and being and a unity of 
substance. Revert again to the Biblical narration: 
"And Elohim said, Let us make man in our image. " 
Why "us" and "our"? To say that God invited the 
angels to assist in the creation of man, and then made 
him Himself without angelic aid, as the Genetical reci- 
tal says He did, would be absurd. To say that God here 
suddenly began to use the magisterial or editorial plural 
is to make the story so formal and mechanical as to 
rob it of all life. Then why did He use the first per- 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN'S CREATION 63 

son plural? The name of God is itself plural in the 
original — Elohim. This does not mean that there are 
many gods, but it does point to the fact that God has 
a variety of life, of subsistence, that He is not a mere 
monad. We might say that God's being and life are 
not a monotone, but that there is diversity in His life ; 
that it is triune in its very constitution. 

Now, if we study profoundly the nature of man as 
a self-conscious being, we discover that a threefold 
process of life is necessary to complete the circuit 
of his self-consciousness. First, there is the mind 
itself; now you can think of your mind, make it its 
own object, set it out, as it were, before you. How- 
ever, you know that the subject and the object are the 
same, the same entity, the same substance. Here, then, 
we have two hypostases — subject and object, yet both 
identical. A third process is necessary, and this pro- 
cess, like the others, is in the very constitution of the 
mind as an entity; the subject must cognize the object 
as its very self, and likewise the object must so cognize 
the subject; yet the cognizer is also the same mind, 
the same substance, as the subject and object. Now 
the circle of self-consciousness is complete. No fur- 
ther process and mode of inner life are required. In 
every self-conscious being there must be this trinity 
of subsistence and unity of substance. 

All we need to do now, since man has been made 
in the image of God, is to apply the foregoing analysis 
to the Divine Being, and we will see that such a Be- 
ing, too, must be a trinity, only infinite and eternal. 
God's life must also be triune — subject, object, and the 
union of the two, each a distinct mode of life, yet the 
same being and essence. Not three Gods or beings, 
but three modes of life, each including the whole di- 
vine personality and substance. We may even go 
further : God must be the eternally self-conscious Be- 
ing. Therefore this triune life must be eternal. 



64 THE RATIONAL TEST 

More than that, the subject begets the object, and is 
its source; the Son is therefore eternally begotten of 
the Father. Again, in the process of mutual recogni- 
tion there is procession from each to each; the Spirit 
therefore proceeds eternally from the Father and Son. 
We do not think this a mere analogy; we think it a 
law of self-conscious life in both the finite and the 
infinite realms. At all events, if we grant that this 
profound law obtains in both man's and God's very 
being, we readily see how it comes about that God and 
man are conscious of each other and sustain holy and 
actual relations. Otherwise the kinship between God 
and man becomes an inexplicable riddle. Therefore 
the Bible account of man's creation is not only the only 
clear and rational one we have, but if it is not true, 
the "Riddle of the Universe" remains a riddle that is 
not, and never can be, unraveled.* 

There is another touch of realism in the general 
account of man's creation ; he was given dominion over 
the animal kingdom. That is true to-day. While, 
on account of sin and imperfection, this regal posi- 
tion is not perfectly realized, yet the proof is clear 
enough for the most skeptical that man is a sovereign 
being in the world that he inhabits; and the more he 
realizes the image of God, the more pronounced his 
dominion becomes. 

Our next effort will be to show the realism and his- 
toricity of the more minute account of man's creation 
in Gen. ii. 7: "And Jehovah God formed man of the 
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life; and man became a living soul." 

Well are we aware that this story has been made the 

* The foregoing metaphysical statement of the triune 
nature of God and man, is given in somewhat more fully 
elaborated form in the chapter on "The Doctrine of the 
Trinity," but it is permitted to stand here, to make the argu- 
ment of the present chapter as much of a unity as possible. 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN'S CREATION 65 

subject of not a little ridicule on the part of skeptics. 
Some of them have denounced it as utterly absurd 
and childish — too much so, indeed, to be accepted by 
the intelligence of the present day. We shall have to 
look into the matter, and get a little beneath the sur- 
face to see whether this is so preposterous a narra- 
tive as some would-be wiseacres would have us sup- 
pose. In the first place, if man was not created in 
this way, how was he brought into being? To de- 
nounce this venerable story as untrue, and propose 
nothing rational in its stead, is surely not a very wise, 
considerate or profound method of procedure. We 
contend that, if man was not made in the Bible way, 
we know absolutely nothing about his origin; it is 
all wrapped in mystery, all shrouded in darkness. 
What is the logical consequence? If we do not know 
whence man came, neither do we know whither he is 
going; if we know nothing of his origin, we surely 
can know nothing of his destiny. Nor do we know 
aught of the purpose of his being in the world. 
Worse than that, there is no hope of our ever know- 
ing. Generations will come and go, each living a self- 
conscious life for a few years, suffering, believing, 
hoping, then perish and go out into eternal oblivion, 
never to know whence or why or whither ! Can any- 
one believe that the universe, so wisely and wonder- 
fully made, so filled with evidence of design, is such 
an eternally meaningless riddle as that? To our 
mind, that is a preposterous belief of the most pre- 
posterous kind. It is absurdity heaped infinitely high 
and stretched out infinitely long. The human mind 
recoils from accepting conclusions that are so unsat- 
isfying. 

Now turn the picture for a moment, and look at the 
bright Biblical side of it : Suppose that man's genesis 
came about as the Bible depicts, what a noble and ex- 
alted origin he had, coming directly from the creative 
5 



66 THE RATIONAL TEST 

hand of God! Then go farther and accept the rest 
of the Bible history of man and the scheme of re- 
demption through Jesus Christ, and all is as clear and 
beautiful as the noonday sun ; then we know whence 
man came, why he is in the world, and whither he is 
going after physical dissolution takes place. Then 
the raison d y etre of man's existence, yea, of the exist- 
ence of the universe itself, is justified and clear. 
Then life has a meaning — yes, more, it has a resplen- 
dent and enchanting meaning. Which alternative will 
the thinker accept? 

An examination of the Biblical narrative of primi- 
tive man's making will indicate its rational character 
and prove its agreement with the facts of human life 
as we know them to-day. Indeed, we shall see that 
it is a very realistic story. While it has its origin in 
the skies, it keeps its feet upon the ground — this cred- 
ible and sane recital of Holy Writ. According to the 
Scriptures God made man's body out of the ground 
and then breathed into him a soul ; that is, He made 
him a dual being. And we find man to be just such 
a being to-day, having a physical organism united 
with a mental or spiritual nature. He knows that he 
is not all body nor all soul, but the two joined in one 
personality. Moreover, he realizes that this union is 
vital, organic ; that the soul — for the time, at least — 
is dependent on the body to a great extent, and that 
the body is no less dependent on the soul. Without 
either he would not be man as we know him to-day. 
How realistic, therefore, is the Bible story! How 
closely it cleaves to the facts of human life! If the 
Biblical representation of man's origin is true, we 
have a most lucid and beautiful way of accounting for 
the fact that he is a dual being. Otherwise we can- 
not account for these facts. For this reason all er- 
roneous philosophies are narrow and one-sided; that 
of the materialist and evolutionist in that he makes 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN'S CREATION 67 

man all physical ; that of the idealist in that he makes 
him all psychical; whereas the Bible gives the full- 
orbed and all-sided view of man as a dual being, com- 
posed of body and soul, such as he is to-day known 
to be. 

With what a firm, realistic hand the Biblical writer 
tells the absorbing story of man's primeval making! 
God formed man's body out of the "dust of the 
ground." As Dr. Keil declares, in his invaluable 
commentary, the original word for "dust" here means 
the finest material of the soil of Eden, not common 
dust such as is trampled in the street. This is one of 
the most realistic touches that could have been given ; 
for when the scientist analyzes a human body in his 
laboratory, he makes the discovery that it is com- 
posed of precisely the same chemical constitutents as 
the ground. We have more than once seen this dem- 
onstrated by men who were thorough masters of the 
sciences of physics and chemistry. However, we need 
not be learned chemists to see how true it -is, for when 
death comes, the human body molders back to the dust 
from which it sprang. Therefore, when the Bible 
says that man's body was made of the material of the 
ground, it hews along the line of actualities ; it is true 
to scientifically established facts and to the facts of 
every-day observation. 

"And man became a living soul." We have al- 
ready dwelt at sufficient length on the fact that man 
has a mental nature, or a soul as well as a body, and 
here again the narrative agrees with the facts as we 
know them to-day. 

Many students of biology, zoology and anthropology 
make much of the fact that there exists a close resem- 
blance between man's body and the bodies of ani- 
mals, and they think it must be accounted for by the 
theory of the evolution of man from the lower ani- 
mal kingdom. We have neither the time nor the dis- 



68 THK RATIONAL TEST 

position just now to prove, what we think can be 
proved, that evolution will not explain near all the 
facts in the case, and that it is not founded on a suf- 
ficiently complete induction of natural facts; but we 
will stop to say that this similitude between men and 
animals can be accounted for very readily from the 
Biblical history; for God made the animals, and gave 
them a vital relation with the real world in which 
they were to live; then when He made man to have 
the same organic relation to the soil and its products, 
and also a vital relation with the lower animal king- 
dom, He was simply carrying out the unity of His 
plan when He gave man a body very similar to that of 
the animals, yet with enough distinction to mark him 
off as a being of a higher order. 

Man, having been created as he was, was placed by 
his Maker in the midst of an environment — a beautiful 
garden with trees bearing various kinds of fruit. 
Note the correspondence to facts again: Wherever 
man goes to-day, and especially wherever he carries 
Christian civilization, he converts the earth into a 
garden. Is that because in his very nature he harks 
back to the orginal Eden in which he was created? 

We wish to state our theological view directly and 
positively at this point : We believe that the environ- 
ment of the first man was a real environment; it was 
a real garden, with real soil, real grass, real fruit-trees, 
real animals, with a real sky overhead. This Edenic 
story is not an allegory. To-day man is in the midst 
of a real environment, not an allegorical one; he walks 
on real soil, not allegorical; he eats real fruit, drinks 
real water, breathes real air, not allegorical or legend- 
ary. Since man is now a real being in the midst of a 
real environment, and has been so in all his history, his 
original condition must also have been real. You can- 
not extract an actual man out of mythical or parabolic 
antecedents and conditions. Our first parents must 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN'S CREATION 69 

have subsisted on real food just as their descendants 
do to-day. 

Adam was also instructed to dress the garden. To- 
day men must cultivate the soil and the fruit-bearing 
trees. Just one word here about the tree of for- 
bidden fruit, though we shall deal with that in the 
next chapter: There is forbidden fruit in nature to- 
day, fruit that cannot be eaten with impunity; there- 
fore the prohibition in the garden of Eden is not one 
that is out of harmony with the status of the world 
of nature as known at the present time. And if the 
Creator has not instituted these prohibitions, then 
what was their origin and what is their purpose? 
The fact of the matter is, the theories of atheism, 
materialism, naturalistic evolution, and agnosticism, 
do not reply satisfactorily to a single profound inquiry 
of the human soul. They are narrow and super- 
ficial ; they may seem to account for a few facts, and 
those the lowest and most materialistic and least im- 
portant; but they do not account for the vast majority 
of the facts, especially the highest and most vital ones. 

The Biblical story of the creation of woman keeps 
close to realities as we are cognizant of them at the 
present time. We know it has often been made the 
object of derision, this "rib story," as it is sometimes 
facetiously called; but there is no occasion whatever 
to laugh it out of court. The first man was put into 
a deep sleep, then a portion was taken from his side, 
and from it God "builded a woman, and brought her 
unto the man." Again we ask of the critics of this 
story, if woman did not get her origin in this way, 
how did woman originate? Can you account for 
her beginning? Twist and mold and squeeze your 
theory of evolution all you will, you cannot get the 
origin of sex out of it, for in all organic realms you 
must first have both the male and the female before 
you can have reproduction. Therefore male and fe- 



70 THE RATIONAL TEST 

male must have come into existence by creation, not 
by evolution. The old and somewhat childish ques- 
tion, " Which came first, the hen or the egg?" is per- 
haps not so puerile, after all, when it is analyzed; 
for if the hen was first, how did she come into ex- 
istence without an tgg y and how could she lay fertile 
eggs that would develop into chicks? If the tgg was 
first, how was it produced, how could it be hatched 
without a brooding hen, and how could the chick sur- 
vive without a mother hen to take care of it? Ob- 
serve that you cannot even account for the origin of 
the ordinary fowl by the process of natural evolution. 
However, the Bible way of accounting for such things 
is at least adequate — that God created both a hen and 
a cock to begin with, and then the whole process of 
subsequent procreation and development came about 
according to well-known scientific facts, facts of in- 
duction. So, granted that in the beginning God cre- 
ated man and woman as -the Bible recites, you have no 
difficulty in giving a rational and scientific account of 
the entire human family to the present moment. 

It may be asked why God proceeded in the way 
He did to make woman : why did He make her from 
a portion of man ? Why, having made the man from 
one parcel of ground, did He not make the woman 
from another? The answer is, that would have given 
the human race two origins instead of one ; it would 
have precluded the solidarity of the human family. 
The Bible method just as it is recorded is better, more 
rational, because it preserves the great scientific truth 
of the unity of the human race, and adequately ac- 
counts for the consciousness in both sexes that they 
are one flesh and one blood, organically one, and that 
mentally they are of the same order and constitution. 
How beautifully, one might say, romantically, the story 
proceeds, when it says that Adam, on seeing the 
woman before him, exclaimed : "This is now bone 



THE BIBLE NARRATIVE OF MAN'S CREATION 7 1 

of my bone and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called 
Woman, because she was taken out of man." (He- 
brew, Ish, man; Isshah, woman.) And that is pre- 
cisely the experience to-day in the relation of the 
sexes in every case of true marriage, real physical and 
mental affinity. And, further, to-day we know of no 
method of procreation save by the process of taking 
a part of the parent as the nucleus or germ; and the 
taking is real, not allegorical, corresponding again 
with the realism of the Bible story. It is significant, 
too, that God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam 
before He made the incision into his side; for to-day 
physicians almost always administer an anaesthetic 
when a surgical operation is to be performed. 

Lastly, the place from which a part of the man was 
taken with which to make the woman is not without 
significance, and will account for certain facts as we 
recognize them at the present time. She was taken 
from the side of man — which tallies with the fact that 
woman is man's companion and helpmeet, made to 
stand by his side. As old Matthew Henry naively 
and truly puts it, woman was taken from man's side ; 
not from his head, that she might top him; not from 
his feet to be trampled down by him; but from his 
side that she might be near his heart, his loving com- 
panion and equal. That is the true woman's relation 
to her husband to-day. Who will say it has not come 
down to us in real historical succession and inherit- 
ance from the creation of the first human pair in the 
garden of Eden? 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION I IS THE BIBLICAL STORY FACT 
OR FICTION ? 

Many modern Biblical critics, especially of the nega- 
tive sort, are wont to call the story of the garden of 
Eden an allegory. Just how they would apply the 
various parts of the story to actual life, it would be 
difficult to say. So far as regards the first tempta- 
tion, however, they would explain that the tree of 
forbidden fruit represents the sinful appeal of the 
world to the human mind, the seduction and yielding 
being entirely psychical and subjective. The tree it- 
self, the critics declare, had no objective reality, and 
as for the idea of a literal serpent, that is almost too 
childish to be thought of for a moment! 

We wish to bring this strategic event to the test of 
reason and experience. Whatever else may be said 
of the Biblical story, it does not read as if the writer 
meant it for fiction ; rather, it reads as if it were meant 
to be veritable history. As a rule, a production that 
is meant to be a fable, parable, or allegory, has 
stamped upon it some of the hall-marks of a produc- 
tion of that kind ; but in the Genetical account there is 
not a word or a syllable to indicate that the writer 
intended to compose a bit of fiction for a didactic 
purpose. For that reason it would seem that he in- 
tended his narrative to be believed as history. Now, 
if he knew it was not history, he must have purposely 
deceived his readers ; if he thought it was history, and 
it was not, he was himself deluded, and his production 
is worthless even as an allegory. That would give to 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION 73 

the Bible a puerile beginning. How such a book 
ever could have won so large a place in the heart and 
faith of the world, it is impossible to conceive. 

Suppose we look somewhat minutely at the Bible 
account of the seduction of our first parents, to see 
whether it bears the sign manual of reality or of 
allegory. 

In the first place, man as we find him to-day, is a 
dual being, composed of body and mind. He lives in 
the midst of a physical environment with which he has 
a most vital relation by means of his physical organ- 
ism; and he has also been endued with a higher na- 
ture, a mental or spiritual, with which he holds com- 
merce with other mental beings. Such is human life 
at the present time; such it is known to have been 
throughout all credible history. 

Go back now, and read the story of man's creation 
and life in the Edenic garden. You will find it taught 
there explicitly that he was originally given a body 
and a soul. With the former he was vitally connected 
with a physical environment; with the latter no less 
vitally related to the psychical realm. Does not this 
tally with man's constitution as we find it to-day? 
At present he is surrounded by and related to a real 
physical cosmos, not a chimerical one. He also has 
real mental experiences and enjoys real mental inter- 
course with other intellectual beings. Therefore the 
account of man's genesis in the second chapter of the 
Bible seems to be natural and realistic. If there was 
a real garden, with real material objects, such as earth, 
grass, trees, fruit, and animals, what a fine air of veri- 
similitude the Biblical narrative carries with it, and 
what a realistically graphic account it gives of the origin 
of the human family ! Call the story only an allegory, 
bodying forth nothing but subjective experiences, and 
you see clearly that it is not true to all the facts of 
human life as we know it to-day; and, worst of all, 



74 THE RATIONAL TEST 

the origin of man is left in obscurity, as is also the 
genesis of evil in the world. 

The second chapter of Genesis states that there 
were many fruit-trees in the garden of Eden, and that 
man was directed to eat of their fruit. Man subsists 
largely on fruit to-day; and it is not mythical fruit. 
Therefore, unless his nature has greatly changed, real 
fruit must have been a large part of his food in the 
beginning of his terrestrial life. He lives on a real 
earth to-day, too, not an allegorical one. Does not 
this agree with the Biblical representation? If our 
first parents were real beings, they must have lived in 
a real garden — that is, a place where real fruit grew 
for their subsistence. 

However, in the Genetical story we read of one tree 
of which our first parents were forbidden to par- 
take — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 
Here is the strategic point with the skeptical critics, 
the crux over which their faith goes to pieces. They 
stoutly contend that this tree could not have been a 
real tree; that it stands for a purely psychical temp- 
tation. 

That there is something symbolical about this tree 
no one can deny. It is called the tree of the know- 
ledge of good and evil, and therefore must represent 
the experience of holiness and sin in the nature of 
man. The fruit itself could not have imparted to our 
first parents the knowledge of good and evil, which 
could have come to them only through growing wis- 
dom in a normal and righteous way, or through an 
act of disobedience, introducing an element of dis- 
cord into their being, which theretofore had flowed on 
with perfect rhythm, in perfect accord with God's 
will, their own constitution, and all their environ- 
ments. So, then, there is a point where symbolism 
does play a part in the program of temptation and sin. 

But it must not be supposed that this concession 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION 75 

makes the story itself an allegory. In God's dealings 
with man He often uses natural objects to illustrate 
spiritual truths. The burning bush is an instance; so 
are many of the parables of our Lord. Because the 
fowls of the air are chosen in Christ's parable to rep- 
resent God's loving care for His creatures does not en- 
courage us to question their reality. 

Suppose for a moment that there was an actual 
tree of forbidden fruit; then when our first parents 
partook of it, would not the very act of transgression 
at once have given them the knowledge, or experience, 
of evil as distinguished from good? Indeed, would it 
not have impinged itself all the more forcibly upon 
their consciousness because the inward act of dis- 
obedience was accompanied by an overt act, both the 
body and the mind having a share in it ? 

Let us go with "the mother of us all" in her temp- 
tation. She was an actual woman of flesh and blood 
and mental constitution — very human, indeed, like 
ourselves, save that she was as yet without sin. For the 
present we will pass by her tempter, as we are now 
dealing mainly with the tree of forbidden fruit. After 
a brief conversation with the enticer, the story runs 
thus (Gen. iii. 6) : "And when the woman saw that 
the tree was good for food — " We must stop to an- 
alyze that first clause. She saw that the tree was 
good for food. Interpreted as allegory, how vague 
the application of the narrative ! Who was the tempt- 
er? What was the fruit? What psychical experi- 
ence is represented by the woman's seeing that the 
fruit was desirable for food ? All is vague and point- 
less. Interpreted as history, however, the story is in 
perfect agreement with what we know to-day of hu- 
man nature. "Good for food!" She was tempted 
on the physical side of her nature, just as people are 
to-day allured by material objects that hold out the 
promise of bodily enjoyment. 



76 THE RATIONAL TEST 

How fine is the realism of the story! Mother 
Eve was not the last of her race who has stolen for- 
bidden fruit even in the most literal sense of the term. 
No, indeed ! The man or woman or child who yields 
to the temptation to creep into his neighbor's orchard 
or garden for purposes of theft simply proves him- 
self to be a lineal descendant of the mother of the race. 
Nor do we mean this statement to be taken jocosely. 
The desire for fruit stealing is woven into the very 
warp and woof of human nature to-day. In its most 
literal sense, therefore, this narrative adheres closely 
to the facts of human experience. 

However, the wider application of the story is that 
men and women to-day are tempted on the physical 
side of their nature, often becoming the most wretched 
victims of passion, appetite, and lust. Indeed if we 
assume that our first parents yielded to a physical se- 
duction, as well as a psychical, and thereby corrupted 
and disorganized to some extent their bodily organism, 
we have an explanation of the awful sensuousness 
that has ever since been the shame and bane of the hu- 
man race. We have never been able to understand 
why, in view of the gross carnality of mankind, any 
critic should insist on making the original temptation 
wholly psychical. 

Going a little further on in the verse we find an- 
other masterly touch of realism: The woman also 
saw that the tree was "pleasant to the eyes." Here 
we are brought face to face with the intimate relation 
existing between the bodily and mental natures in man. 
Bodily eyes to see the beautiful fruit upon the tree, 
a mind to appreciate the attraction — how natural! 
how realistic ! It agrees perfectly with the actual con- 
stitution of men to-day. How often are men tempted 
on the physical and psychical sides of their nature 
combined ! Often it is difficult to determine to which 
part of their being the stronger appeal is made. 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION 77 

Moreover, how many persons have been lured to their 
ruin by outward beauty — of fruit, of art, of the human 
personality ! In the vegetable world some of the most 
poisonous berries and fruits are the most attractive 
to the eye. In the human world sometimes the most 
loathsome characters appear in the most seductive 
guise. The touch of the inspired penman was true 
and graphic when he wrote that the tree was "pleas- 
ant to the eyes." 

A superficial writer of fiction might have stopped 
here and left the story incomplete in its human qual- 
ity. Not so the genius who wrote this profound 
story of Genesis. He had previously said that man 
in the creation was dowered with a soul or mind ; 
now he must be consistent with himself, he must keep 
the story properly sustained if he would have his 
readers believe that he is recording actual history. 
So he adds another realistic touch — the woman saw 
that the forbidden tree was "a tree to be desired to 
make one wise." A purely psychical temptation 
there! Wisdom has nothing materialistic about it; it 
belongs solely to the domain of the spirit. The con- 
gruity of the story is, therefore, sustained; it reads 
like a paragraph from modern history, for to-day we 
see people yielding to the enticements of ambition 
and moral pride, just as Eve did when she wanted to 
take a short cut to wisdom. 

Now the whole gamut of possible human tempta- 
tion had been run, and the writer stopped, just as a 
true historian should have done. There are no 
other kinds of blandishments to which human nature 
is subject save these three — the purely sensuous, the 
purely psychical, and the union of the two. Had the 
writer added another he would have fallen into error ; 
his history would have lacked scientific accuracy and 
would have foisted something extraneous upon human 
nature. 



78 THE RATIONAL TEST 

A question that might be asked is this: Was the 
forbidden fruit itself injurious? We do not see why 
it may not have been. To-day nature produces nox- 
ious fruits and cereals, some of them merely un- 
wholesome, others positively poisonous. In some way, 
too, the seeds of disease and death dwell in the physical 
constitution of man. We would suggest this inquiry 
as a subject worthy of thought: Might not the for- 
bidden fruit have introduced the beginning of dis- 
organization into the human body? At least, we see 
nothing unreasonable in the supposition, though it is 
not necessary in order to prove the realism of the 
story, because if sin first entered into the soul only, 
it still would have disturbed the harmony of man's en- 
tire being, including the physical as well as the psy- 
chical, and this on account of the vital relation exist- 
ing between the two parts of his nature. 

Why did the Almighty place the tree of forbidden 
fruit in the garden ? That is the question that puzzles 
and distresses more people than almost any other con- 
nected with the Bible. It is a problem that is not 
easy to solve. Still, we believe that an analysis will 
prove that it will stand the test of the rational process. 
Here again we find the story in agreement with what 
we know of human nature. Man has a conscious- 
ness of freedom, of a "will in liberty." He does not 
feel that he is the football of fate or the puppet of 
circumstances, but that in many respects he is a free 
moral agent. He is not only intuitively conscious of 
such a gift or enduement, but the very fact that he 
feels remorse of conscience when he does wrong 
proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he is a moral 
being and not merely an automaton. It is only dia- 
lectical sophistry that calls in question any of the facts 
of the universal consciousness. You cannot prove 
fundamental truths; you simply know them by intui- 
tion. 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION 79 

Now, when we come to analyze the qualities of free 
moral agency, we find that it involves the power of 
choice. Suppose there had been no prohibition in the 
garden, what would have become of our first parents' 
free moral agency? Had they been created with such 
an endowment, they would have had no opportu- 
nity to exercise it, and that would have virtually 
made them slaves to the will of God. The same 
would have been true if God had created them with- 
out the power of choice. In either case they would 
have been different beings from men as we know them 
to-day, and therefore could not have been the pro- 
genitors of the human race. To have created man 
sinful would have made God the author of sin — a 
thought that is intolerable. And it is just as irration- 
al. According to the Bible God is so far from being 
the author of sin that He is represented as being ex- 
ceedingly grieved and angry because sin came into 
the world. The Bible would be a book that was 
silly to the point of imbecility had it made God the 
author of sin and then portrayed Him as angry at our 
first parents for their disobedience. Judging from 
the Bible's influence on the civilization of the world, 
it is not so puerile a book as that. Somehow it must 
commend itself to the rational judgment of a large 
part of the human family, and the most intelligent and 
advanced part at that. 

Besides, to have created man sinful would have 
partly destroyed his free agency, because it would 
have given him a bias toward evil. As he was cre- 
ated, he was made with a perfect balance of will 
power, so that he could, without coercion from either 
side, choose obedience or disobedience. That is the 
reason God did not come to man's rescue and prevent 
his seduction. He would not interfere with man's ex- 
ercise of his greatest prerogative, the power of free 
choice. Had God interfered, He would have com- 



80 THE RATIONAL TEST 

pelled man to be obedient and man would have been 
a sinner in his heart, after all ; or if not that, he would 
have been merely an obedient machine or animal. 

But must man be made a free being at all hazards? 
Why did not God create him a good and happy being 
without the dangerous prerogative of free moral 
agency? These are questions that are often asked by 
the thoughtful and the skeptical. We would reply as 
kindly as possible that persons who offer the fore- 
going objection prove by their inquiries that they do 
not have as high a conception of ethical qualities as 
they ^should have. They seem to think that a happy be- 
ing is rather to be chosen than a moral being. God 
had already made such happy but unmoral beings — 
the lower animals that existed before man. They 
were happy and good in their way — but they were 
only animals, not men, not moral and free intelli- 
gences. If a creature is to be created who is higher in 
the scale of being than the members of the animal 
creation, that creature must be endowed with the 
power of free choice. 

Evidently God had higher conceptions than the 
epicurean philosopher. God preferred a moral being 
to a happy animal or machine. Ethical quality is the 
highest quality in the universe, and the power of 
choice — in other words, free moral agency — is the very 
essence of ethical quality. Without it there could be 
no such thing as the ethical. More than that, the 
power of free will is the noblest attribute of any being, 
whether human, angelic or divine. God is only God 
because He is ethically good and ethically free. Man 
is man o$ly because he is a free being. God takes 
pleasure in His natural creation ; He takes more pleas- 
ure in the free, uncoerced service of beings macje in 
His own image. We scarcely hope to make the de- 
bauched sensualist see this, because he cares not for 
moral excellence; he is steeped in mere material en- 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION 8 1 

joyment. However, the argument will be effective 
with those who have attained to the sphere of moral 
freedom and spiritual appreciation. 

We must say a word as to the role played by the 
serpent in this drama of the fall of man. To-day we 
find that nature often comes to men in the guise of a 
tempter. This fact is so patent to every thinker that 
we need neither elaborate nor illustrate it. How else 
could this evil principle have come into nature save 
by the intrusion of some evil spirit frorn without into 
her sphere? Surely God would not have created the 
natural world with the evil principle in it. Then how 
did natural evil come about? We think the most 
probable and rational explanation is that an evil 
spirit entered into nature, assuming one of her myriad 
forms, and thereby contaminated the entire realm, 
and would have destroyed it had not God stretched 
forth His staying hand, and said: "Thus far shalt 
thou go, and no farther." If that does not explain 
the genesis and the presence of evil and misfortune 
in the natural world, there is no explanation. We 
might as well confess ourselves agnostics at once. If 
it should be asked why God permitted evil to come 
into the sphere of nature, our only reply is — for pur- 
poses of human discipline and development. God 
would rather see His rational creatures strong and 
brave than selfishly and supinely happy, knowing that 
in the end they would attain the greater felicity. 

The evil spirit's adroitness was exhibited by his en- 
tering into the serpent, which the Bible characterizes 
as "more subtle than any beast of the field which Jeho- 
vah God had made" (Gen. iii. i). That again is in 
accord with the sly, deceptive approaches of evil as 
we know it at the present time, proving the Bible to 
be a realistic as well as a divine book. 

One more question is certainly worthy of reply: 
Why was Satan the tempter? It was well it was so; 
6 



82 THE RATIONAL TEST 

for thus the enticement came to man from without ; it 
did not have its initiative from within the sphere of 
his own being. That in a measure mitigates man's 
sin, and leaves him redeemable, though a fallen creat- 
ure. The fact that Satan took upon himself the guise 
of the serpent also extenuates man's transgression, 
for man was thereby deceived, enticed into the act 
of disobedience. This will be made clear by sup- 
posing that our first parents had eaten of the forbidden 
fruit without a tempter and without deception. How 
much more aggravated their offense would then have 
been ! Then their sin would have been so heinous, 
coming from the very depths of their own being, that 
they would scarcely have been salvable, and therefore 
a Saviour would perhaps never have been provided. 
So far as we can understand the teaching of the divine 
Word, the angels who fell cannot be redeemed. May 
it not be so because their temptation came from 
within, through no outward allurement and deception ? 
That, at least, is a phase of the subject that is worth 
pondering. 

This will be the time to refute the error, entertained 
by many well-meaning persons, that the sin of our first 
parents was that of cohabitation. For a number of 
reasons this interpretation is not admissible. First, 
if the sin was that of the sexual relation, there was 
no need of representing it in allegorical form. In- 
deed, it would have been a serious error on the part 
of the narrator to use allegory in such a case, and thus 
make his meaning obscure, when he might have much 
better told in literal form just what the sin was. That 
is not a good allegory or parable that darkens the 
facts in the case, making interpretation either uncertain 
or impossible. More than that, the similarity between 
sexual intercourse and the eating of a tree of forbid- 
den fruit is too indefinite and far-fetched to make a 
good comparison, especially in the earliest narrative 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION 83 

we have of human sin. The Biblical expression for 
sexual intercourse almost invariably is, "He knew his 
wife," which, indeed, is afterwards used relative to 
Adam and Eve. Why was not the current phrase 
employed here? That would have removed all doubt. 

In the second place, nowhere in the Bible is co- 
habitation between man and wife represented as a sin ; 
rather the contrary. Even in Genesis i. 28, immedi- 
ately after the creation of man and woman, and be- 
fore there is any hint of sin, we find this significant 
and decisive language: "And God blessed them; and 
God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and 
replenish the earth, and subdue it." Then in the 31st 
verse it is added : "And God saw everything that he 
had made, and, behold, it was very good." It surely 
would be unreasonable for God to command our first 
parents to multiply and replenish the earth, and then 
condemn them and drive them out of Eden for carry- 
ing out His injunction. Even in the Xew Testament 
the marriage relation in its true sense is sanctioned. 
Our Lord Himself refers to the original status of our 
first parents as the proper model for the marital rela- 
tion, as over against adultery, fornication and poly- 
gamy. Besides, if cohabitation was the original sin, 
then marriage itself must be a wicked relation. How 
inconsistent it would have been for God to condemn 
our first parents for such an act, drive them out of 
Eden, curse the earth on their account, and bring all 
the woes of natural depravity upon all their descend- 
ants, and then afterwards sanction and command the 
very conduct and relation that caused all the disaster ! 
No; the Bible is not so imbecile a book as that. 

The sin of the original pair was precisely what it is 
represented to be in the Bible — the sin of disobedience 
through the eating of the forbidden fruit. That sin- 
ful act was, first of all, individual and concrete; then 
it was also representative and seminal, standing for all 



84 THE RATIONAL TEST 

sin, whose essence is disobedience, and containing the 
germ of all depravity in the posterity of the progeni- 
tors of the human race. As has been shown, the first 
sin was of such a character as to include potentially 
all sin, because it involved the body, the soul, and the 
organic union of the two. No other sin that could 
have been committed could have been so representa- 
tive and all-inclusive. 

There are several touches of realism in the narra- 
tive immediately following the act of disobedience 
that are worthy of our attention. For example, there 
is the statement that "the eyes of both of them were 
opened, an$ they knew that they were naked." How 
true to facts as we know them to-day? Sinful indul- 
gence does open men's eyes in one most salient way — 
makes them Conscious of shame and brings remorse. 
Innocence destroyed brings a sense of disgrace. The 
writer cannot help thinking that before the fall, the 
physical organism of the first pair was so beautiful 
and perfect that no covering was needed, but the 
moment sin entered into the human constitution, the 
body lost its natural loveliness as the soul lost its 
innocence and purity, and consequently the sense of 
disharmony, shame and unsightliness was impinged 
upon the consciousness of the offenders. 

Note, too, that, as soon as Adam and Eve heard 
God approaching, they hid themselves ! That is real- 
ism indeed. It reads like an excerpt from a modern 
narrative or from human experience. No sooner has 
a man committed a sin to-day than he wants to hide 
from God ; he fears to meet God face to face ; he tries 
to shut the thought of God out of his mind, ensconcing 
himself sometimes behind the bushes of atheism; he 
endeavors to make himself believe that there never 
will be a judgment day when his sins will be revealed 
and an account must be rendered to Him from whom 
nothing can be disguised. 



THE FIRST TEMPTATION 85 

The pen of the inspired writer kept close to facts 
as we know them to-day when he represented Adam 
as trying to throw the responsibility for his sin upon 
other shoulders. First, he made an effort to put the 
blame upon the woman. How man-like! His male 
descendants have been doing the same thing ever since 
— blaming the other sex for many of their misde- 
meanors. Adam also said, "The woman Thou gavest 
to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." 
He sought to lay the blame ultimately upon God Him- 
self. As much as to say, "If you had not given me 
the woman, or would have made her different, I 
never would have been led into this mistake !" To-day 
many men are disposed to put the blame of their 
wrong doing upon God, upon the constitution of 
things, upon their environments, upon heredity — al- 
most anything to relieve themselves of personal re- 
sponsibility. This proves, again, that the Bible narra- 
tive hews close to the facts of human nature. 

When Eve tried to shift the blame upon the serpent, 
she proved herself the mother of the race. We have 
with our own ears heard people thrust the responsi- 
bility for their own wrong doing upon the devil, there- 
by disowning even their own share in the sin. 
Mother Eve may have been the first person, but she 
was certainly not the last, to make the evil one a con- 
venient scapegoat. 

Going further into the narrative, how true and well- 
balanced we find God's judgment on the case of the 
first transgression ! First, He deals with the serpent, 
representing Satan, who was the original sinner and 
who beguiled our first parents into disobedience, and to 
him God meted out condign punishment. Then He 
dealt out punishment to the woman and the man re- 
spectively in the order of their transgression, thereby 
giving to each his just reward, as much as to say: 
"Satan, woman, and man all sinned, each in his or her 



86 THE RATIONAL TEST 

own way, and therefore each must bear the respon- 
sibility for his or her part in the great tragedy of 
transgression/' None of them can be excused, and 
yet none of them is to bear the blame for the other's 
obliquity. Just so it is to-day — the seducer is respon- 
sible for his seduction; the enticed one for yielding. 
There is always a point in any ethical act where a 
free moral agent is responsible ; there is always, as 
well, a point where his responsibility ends. Even God 
Himself is responsible for His act in creating a moral 
agent with the possibility of sinning, and we may rely 
upon it that He will bear His burdto in the whole 
transaction, meting out only such penalty as is just and 
giving the reward that is due. "He knoweth our 
frame; He remembereth that we are dust;" "The 
bruised reed He will not break, and the smoking flax 
He will not quench." The very fact that God, with 
the condemnation of the sin, promised a Redeemer, 
proves His goodness and justice; for by His own ini- 
tiative and of His own free will and accord He estab- 
lished a plan for righting the wrong that had been 
done, and recovering man from his ruined condition. 



VI 

THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 

Having in the preceding chapters treated of the 
making and unmaking of man, the next step in the 
logical process is to deal with his re-making. It 
would indeed be an unsatisfactory treatise that told 
us about "Paradise lost" without saying anything 
about "Paradise regained." If the Bible teaching is 
clear on the doctrines of the creation and fall of man, 
it is none the less explicit in its setting forth of the 
doctrine of the re-creation of man. In this respect 
it depicts a complete scheme. In portraying and justi- 
fying the Bibl;cal plan for man's recovery, the logical 
steps will be, first, the miraculous conception of 
Christ; second, the need of the incarnation; third, the 
true doctrine of atonement; fourth, the raison d'etre 
of the new birth; fifth, the ultimate purpose of the 
resurrection. These themes will be treated in suc- 
cessive chapters. 

With the critical questions involved in the doctrine 
of the virgin birth of our Lord we shall not deal to 
any great extent in this chapter. Those who desire 
to enter into the merits of the questions of criticism are 
referred to Dr. James Orr's masterly work, "The Vir- 
gin Birth of Christ." It is gratifying indeed to find 
a scholar who is at the same time so thorough and so 
evangelical, proving that it is not true that all the 
scholarship of the day is in sympathy with the radical 
criticism. All persons who have had difficulties with 
the Biblical narratives of the birth of Christ, with the 
apparent silence of most of the New Testament 



88 THE RATIONAL TEST 

writers regarding it, and with the various myth and 
legend theories that have been propounded, should by 
all means read Dr. Orr's treatise. 

There are, however, several questions raised in Dr. 
Orr's volume that it will be well to dwell upon for a 
little while, so as to make our subsequent discussion 
of the rationale of the virgin birth more thorough- 
going. First, there are two pointed and explicit gos- 
pel narratives of the miraculous conception of our 
Saviour. They are found in Matthew and Luke. 
Let us look at Matthew's recital: "Now the birth of 
Jesus was on this wise: When His mother Mary had 
been " betrothed to Joseph, before they came together 
she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. v It 
cannot be doubted for a moment that Matthew meant 
to convey the impression that our Lord was not con- 
ceived by natural generation, but by a direct act of the 
Holy Spirit. "And Joseph, her husband, being a 
righteous man, and not willing to make her a public 
example, was minded to put her away privily. But 
when he thought on these things, behold, an angel of 
the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying: 
Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee 
Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is 
of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, 
and thou shalt call His name Jesus; for it is He that 
shall save His people from their sins. 

"Now all this is come to pass that it might be ful- 
filled which was spoken by the Lord through the 
prophet, saying: Behold, the virgin shall be with 
child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call 
His name Immanuel ; which is, being interpreted, God 
with us. And Joseph arose from his sleep and did as 
the Lord commanded him, and took unto him his 
wife ; and knew her not till she had brought forth a 
Son; and he called His name Jesus." 

If the foregoing quotation does not teach the doc- 



THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 89 

trine of the true virginity of Mary and the true vir- 
gin birth of Christ, then language cannot be made to 
convey a clear and unmistakable meaning. Matthew- 
even goes so far as to state that no cohabitation took 
place between Joseph and Mary prior to the birth of 
Jesus, even after their marriage, and he makes this dec- 
laration for the evident purpose of precluding the idea 
that Christ was of purely human generation. There- 
fore those who deny the miraculous birth of our Lord 
are driven to the position of radical criticism and must 
deny the historical integrity of the gospel narratives. 
We know, therefore, with whom we have to deal. As 
Dr. Orr pertinently remarks, those who oppose the vir- 
gin birth are the men who oppose the supernatural in 
general, whereas those who accept the divine or mirac- 
ulous element in the Scriptures have no more diffi- 
culty in accepting this miracle than any other miracle 
of the Word of God. 

Let us now turn to Luke's record of the miraculous 
birth. First, note the account of the conception of 
John the Baptist. An angel appeared to Zacharias 
and said to him: "Thy wife Elizabeth shall bear 
thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John." See 
how careful Luke is to indicate that John's conception 
came about by human generation, aided simply by a 
supernatural act of quickening. Observe now the 
difference in the angel's language toJMary, the mother 
of Jesus, shortly afterwards. Again and again she 
is called a virgin, not a wife, though betrothed to 
Joseph. After the first annunciation by the angel, 
she was almost overcome with fear and doubt, and her 
language is extremely significant. She exclaimed : 
"How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" Here 
is an assertion of Mary's virginity from her own lips. 
To call her statement in question is to cast the worst 
slur imaginable on the character of the woman of 
history who has ever since been regarded as the sweet- 



9<3 THE RATIONAL TEST 

est, purest, most blessed of womankind. Then the 
angel said: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Most High shall overshadow 
thee: wherefore the holy thing which is begotten of 
thee shall be called the Son of God. . . . And 
Mary said, Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it 
unto me according to thy word." 

Such a simple, chaste, dignified narrative carries on 
the face of it the hall-marks of sincerity and genuine- 
ness. If Mary was a woman of evil character, she 
was the most arch deceiver the world has ever known. 
Go further in the story and read her Magnificat, which 
is an expression of the most exalted spiritual rapture, 
the most immaculate purity, a model in all literature 
of true religious chant and song. There is what we 
might call a naivete about the language and conduct 
of Mary which marks her as an innocent and holy 
woman. In not a word or act of her life does she be- 
tray the slightest consciousness of guilt. It is simply 
out of the question to attribute such an air of Inno- 
cence and chastity to consummate acting. 

As to the evangelists themselves, if Matthew and 
Luke did not tell a true story, they were either dupes 
or impostors. II the former, they were such stupid 
and gullible men that one cannot help wondering how 
their gospels could have ever gained so much credence 
throughout the centuries, winning thousands of people 
from sinful to righteous lives, and capturing the con- 
fidence and respect of many of the noblest intellects 
the world has ever seen. And could they have been 
deceivers ? The very purity of their style and thought 
and the exalted moral influence their compositions 
have effected preclude such an assumption. 

Besides, Matthew and Luke were of such an intel- 
lectual fibre as to put the signet of genuineness upon 
their narrations. Matthew was a tax-gatherer, a pub- 
lic officer, and therefore a man of more than ordinary 



THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 9 1 

intelligence, who would not have been likely to be 
easily imposed on. Luke was a physician, and phy- 
sicians are proverbially inclined to be skeptical of any- 
thing that does not occur in their special domain of 
study according to the laws of human physiology. 
We have heard more than one doctor declare that he 
could not believe the doctrine of the miraculous con- 
ception of Christ, because he never knew procreation 
to take place save in the natural way. Yet here is 
the physician Luke, a man intelligent enough to write 
literature which has endured through the centuries, 
reciting a story, with the utmost air of conviction, of 
a birth from a virgin through the overhadowing of 
the Holy Spirit! Is not that significant? Would he 
have been likely to accept a myth? A man of his pro- 
fession would not have believed such a story without 
the most conclusive evidence of its truth. To sup- 
pose that both these intelligent men could have been 
deceived by a lustful and designing woman, and to 
such a degree as to believe that she had conceived the 
Son of God by the Holy Ghost, is, to our way oj 
thinking, the height of credulity. We can more easily 
believe their story than believe that they could have 
been imposed on in such a stupid way. They were 
competent witnesses, and their testimony cannot be im- 
peached. 

We shall now summarize a few of the arguments of 
Dr. Orr for the benefit of those who may not be able 
to procure his work. Reviewing the critics who re- 
ject the doctrine of the virgin birth, we find that they 
differ so widely and radically among themselves as 
virtually to disprove one another's theories. The 
only thing they agree on is that they do not believe in 
our Saviour's supernatural conception. For instance, 
Harnack and Lobstein declare that the story, which 
they call a myth, must be of Hebrew origin, and they 
apparently make good their position, so far as furnish- 



92 THE RATIONAL TEST 

ing proof is concerned. On the other hand, Soltau 
and Cheyne produce just as convincing evidence that 
it must have been of Gentile origin and never could 
have sprung up out of Hebraic soil. You might say, 
therefore, that the negative critics neutralize and de- 
stroy one another, and we might stand off at one side 
and enjoy the melee. However, Dr. Orr enters the 
arena and forces both parties to retire. He marshals 
indubitable proof that such a myth could not have 
taken its rise among the Hebrews, for they were not 
disposed to myth-making, and such a myth as a con- 
ception by the Holy Ghost would have been contrary 
to all their traditions. 

Most of the modern critics accept the hypothesis 
that the myth, as they call it, took its cue from the 
heathen mythologies, in which, as we know, the gods 
are often represented as having intercourse with 
women, and thereby giving birth to heroes and 
demi-gods. With this view Dr. Orr deals in a most 
thorough and convincing way. Take, for example, 
the coarse fables of the origin of Hermes, Dionysius, 
Esculapius, and Hercules. In all of them there is no 
idea of a virgin birth such as is described in Matthew 
and Luke. The Greek gods are conceived of as hav- 
ing parts, passions and forms like mortal men, and they 
beget children after the carnal manner. Says our 
author : "A god, inflamed by lust — Zeus is a chief 
sinner — surprises a maiden and has a child by her, 
but it is by natural generation. There is nothing here 
analogous to the virgin birth of the gospels. The 
stories themselves are incredibly vile. The better- 
minded in Greece and Rome were ashamed of them. 
Plato would have banished them from his Republic. 
They were, as Tertullian tells us, the subjects of pub- 
lic ridicule. It is a strange imagination that can sup- 
pose that these foul tales could have been taken over 
by the church, and, in the short space before the com- 



THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 93 

position of our gospels, become the inspiration of the 
beautiful and chaste narratives of Matthew and 
Luke !" 

Of the same immoral character are the crude fables 
about the superhuman origin of Plato, Alexander and 
Augustus. In none of these cases was the birth from 
a virgin. Alexander spread the report that he was 
not the son of Philip, but was begotten by a serpent 
cohabiting with his mother. In the case of Augustus, 
while his mother was asleep in the temple, Apollo vis- 
ited her in the form of a serpent, and in the tenth 
month afterwards he — Augustus — was born. Think 
now for a moment of the idea that the pure-minded 
disciples of Christ, who went about doing good and 
advocating the loftiest doctrines of moral chastity, 
would borrow a myth of the origin of their holy Lord 
from such coarse, vulgar, lust-inspired stories as those 
just cited relative to the conduct of the gods of Greece 
and Rome. Such an imputation is worse than pre- 
posterous; it is a slander. 

Some of the critics hie somewhat jauntily away 
over into India for their myth-manufactory, contending 
that the legend (so-called) of the miraculous birth of 
Christ got its inception from the story of the incarna- 
tion of Gautama. But there is not the slightest evi- 
dence that the early Christians, including the gospel 
writers, were familiar with the story of Buddha. 
Even if they were, it must have had so little influence 
at that time that it never could have gained enough 
headway to be incorporated in the Christian system 
and accepted as an article of faith. And what is the 
story of the conception and birth of Buddha? While 
his mother — a married woman, not a virgin at all — 
was asleep, she dreamed that a white, six-tusked ele- 
phant entered her side, and ten months later she gave 
birth to the child Gautama. Even if the evangelists 
ever heard this uncouth story, can you imagine for a 
moment that they would have appropriated it? 



94 THE RATIONAL TEST 

We shall follow the myth-mongers no further, but 
refer the reader to Dr. Orr's work, wherein it is shown 
that the critics' attempts to derive the idea of Christ's 
miraculous conception from the mythologies of Egypt, 
Persia and Babylonia fare no better. 

Many of the critics maintain that the virgin birth 
has no doctrinal significance anyway; that it might be 
given up without any hurt to the Christian system ; 
therefore, why must we be asked to believe something 
that seems to be unreasonable when nothing is to be 
gained by it? But we reply that the critics themselves 
are inconsistent when they make such a claim; be- 
cause, in trying to account for the origin of the story — 
they call it a myth — among the early Christians, they 
contend that it arose as an endeavor to explain and 
justify the supernatural character of Jesus. If that 
is true, the virgin birth must lie at the very basis of 
faith in the divinity of Christ. If the enemies of the 
doctrine appreciate its vital connection with the doc- 
trine of the deity of our Lord, orthodox believers 
have st;ll more interest in recognizing such a relation. 
We are persuaded that if the doctrine of the mirac- 
ulous birth, with all that is implied in it, were surren- 
dered, we might as well make up our minds at once to 
give up the doctrine of Christ's deity; and that would 
mean the evacuation of the very citadel of the Chris- 
tian system of truth. 

Suppose, now, we look at the doctrine of the virgin 
birth from the viewpoint of reason, and see whether 
is has a rational basis. * In the first place, no one can 
deny that it is in perfect consistence with the whole 
Biblical scheme of truth, which is at the same time 
realistic and supernatural. By this we mean that the 
supernatural element, according to the Bible, is al- 

* The arguments that follow in this chapter are not to be 
accredited to Dr. Orr, and therefore he must not be held re- 
sponsible for any faults that may occur in the presentation. 



THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 95 

ways vitally and organically connected with the real 
and natural world. Go back to the narrative in Gen- 
esis ii., which rehearses the story of man's creation. 
Prior to that act, God had made the world ; and it was 
a real world, not a phantasmagoria of some kind — 
real material substance, real soil, real grass, animals, 
air, water, and so on. Then God came down into the 
garden of Eden, which was a real garden, and taking 
a portion of the finest soil of the garden, he molded it 
into the form of a human body — a body that must 
have been composed of real material, just as our 
bodies are to-day — a subject dealt with sufficiently in 
a preceding chapter. Then Elohim infused into the 
body the breath of life, so that man became a living 
being. 

Thus the first Adam was created. He was the fed- 
eral head of the human family, and was designed to 
lead his posterity to realms of blessedness forever- 
more. But he abused his freedom, and ate of the for- 
bidden fruit. In this way he nullified his headship of 
the race, recreant to the trust reposed in him. There- 
fore as the ethical and spiritual head of the human 
family he was deposed, and a new federal head had 
to be constituted. But constitutionally and logically 
the new head had to be organically connected with the 
race of beings that had sinned and were to be re- 
deemed. If another human nature than the one to be 
redeemed had been created there would have been a 
break in the whole plan of human life. God's scheme 
would have lacked organic unity and would have been 
merely a mechanical re-arrangement — in other words, 
a mere makeshift. God does not work iri that way. 
His entire universe has stamped upon it everywhere 
the characteristic of organic consistency and harmony. 
See how the Biblical story of the incarnation fits into 
the divine scheme of *> human history and human re- 
demption. In the beginning God created the first 



96 THE RATIONAL TEST 

Adam, connecting him vitally with the nature that He 
had previously created. Now when a new Federal 
Head is to be constituted to lead the human race 
back to its pristine purity and its intended destiny, 
God comes again and forms a new human nature in 
essentially the same way that He formed the original 
human nature — that is, out of precisely the same sub- 
stance, physical and psychical; He does not make an- 
other human nature, and arbitrarily close up the 
cleavage between the two. No; He takes of the hu- 
man nature that has already been created and that is 
to be reinstated, re-forms it, purifies it from all cor- 
ruption, preserves it from all defilement, gives it birth 
according to the laws instituted in the beginning, and 
thus sets forth in the world a new and perfect Adam 
who is to be the race's Federal Head and lead it to 
victory over sin. Thus, while we still receive our cor- 
rupt nature from the first Adam, we receive our new 
nature from Christ by virtue of direct re-birth, which 
we call regeneration. This applies even to the resur- 
rection of the body, for the first Adam leads our 
bodies down to death and the tomb; but the contact 
of the resurrected body of the New Adam with our 
bodies at the last day will revive them and start them 
on their glorious destiny of immortal life. 

Now, whatever else may be thought of this method of 
argument, it will be seen that the incarnation of the 
Logos by means of the miraculous birth is congruous 
with the whole Biblical scheme of human creation, re- 
demption and destiny. That, we take it, is a strong 
proof of its truth. If any man rejects this Biblical 
program, he is all at sea as to how God will save the 
human family, or whether He will save it at all. 

Let us look at the doctrine from another point of 
view. If Christ's human nature, body and soul, had 
been generated in the natural way, the law of hered- 
ity, which is one of God's laws, would have stepped 



THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 97 

in and corrupted that nature ; in which case human re- 
demption would have been doomed to be a failure 
from the start ; for if the first Adam, who was created 
innocent, made a failure, how much more surely would 
the second Adam have failed if a carnal nature had 
been entailed upon Him ! Figure it as you will, a 
miracle had to be performed in the conception of our 
Lord, if He was to be the Redeemer. God might, per- 
haps, have permitted the conception to take place in 
the natural way, and exerted His supernatural power 
to prevent the transmission of Adamic corruption; 
but that would have been just as much of a miracle as 
the virgin birth. But why was it not done in that 
way? Would it not have given Christ an immaculate 
conception just as the virgin birth did? It might 
have; but Christ was to be more than merely an im- 
maculate man; Adam was such a man, and had 
failed. More than that, Christ had a task on His 
hands that did not belong to the original man. He 
had not only to become the new Federal Head of the 
race; He also had to rescue a race that was lost and 
steeped in sin; He had, in addition, to make atone- 
ment for the sin that had outraged God's moral law. 
So we repeat, He had to be more than an immaculate 
man as Adam was. He had to be God as well as 
man; divine as well as human. And we maintain 
that, in the very constitution of things, if He had been 
generated in the natural way, even though all the cor- 
ruption inherent in such an act had been eliminated, 
there would not have been the possibility of a real, vital, 
personal union of divinity and humanity in His per- 
son. In order to constitute a divine-human personal- 
ity, the divine Being had to enter into the procreative 
depths of humanity and select and assume a human 
nature of His formation and purifying, and unite 
Himself personally with it. It must be bone of our 
bone, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul, in order to be 
7 



98 THE RATIONAL TEST 

organically connected with the human race; but it 
must be our nature lifted out of itself, separated, puri- 
fied, transmuted — a human nature that, strangely and 
mysteriously enough, could be "tempted in all points 
like as we are, yet without sin." 

Perhaps it may still be urged by the objector 
that the human nature of Christ might have been 
procreated in the natural way and the divine Logos 
connected with it, thus making, after all, a di- 
vine-human personality. A little sturdy thought will 
convince anyone that such a procedure would have 
been contrary to the very nature of things — unconsti- 
tutional as well as illogical. First, it would have been 
simply a connection of the divine with the human 
nature, not an assumption of the human nature by the 
divine. Hence the relation would have been arbitrary 
and not vital and organic. Second, that method 
would have given our Lord a dual personality. Nat- 
ural procreation would have made Him a complete 
human person ; then, if the divine Logos had been 
united with Him, there would have been two persons in 
the one being; which would not only be absurd, but 
would be contrary to all the laws of the universe, in 
which such an anomaly as a twofold personality is not 
known. The superficial thinker might reply that the 
human personality might have been merged into the 
divine. Not so; for then the human personality 
would have had to be destroyed, blotted out, rendered 
null and void — a divine act that is simply preposterous 
and unthinkable. If God never destroys even an 
atom that has once been created, how much less would 
He annihilate a personality that He has once brought 
into existence ! 

No; the more you ponder the matter in the philo- 
sophical sense, the more thoroughly you must be 
convinced that there was only one way in which the 
divine incarnation could have rightly taken place, and 



THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST 99 

that was by means of the virgin birth, in which the 
Logos took for Himself a germinal portion of human 
nature from the inmost nature, psychical and physi- 
cal, of a woman, assumed it in a real hypostatic union 
with the divine, and thus made that unique Person 
whom we call the God-Man. Thus by taking of the 
human nature already created, the Logos kept His 
solidarity with the human family ; making a real union 
between God and man possible. 

May we add still another thought simply to show how 
rationally God proceeded in all the acts of redeeming 
love and grace ? The Bible says that Christ was made 
of a woman. Why only a woman? Might it not be 
thought that the unity of the human family was 
broken by the use of only one sex in the act of con- 
ception and incarnation? But such is not the case 
when you remember the whole Biblical scheme of hu- 
man creation and redemption. Go back to the Edenic 
garden again, and you will find that God first created 
the man, and from a portion of his constitution He 
made woman, so that woman is composed seminally 
of the original human nature that was created in the 
beginning, and thus the solidarity of the race remains 
intact. Now, when the Logos took of the nature of the 
Virgin Mary, even without the intervention of the mas- 
culine sex, He was assuming potentially the whole of 
human nature, and not simply a part of it. How 
suggestive, therefore, the name that Christ so often 
applied to Himself — the Son of Man; not the Son of 
a man, but the Son of Man, which means the Son of 
Humanity. Therefore He was more than the arche- 
typal man; more than the immaculate man; He was 
the Universal Man; in Him was the sum and sub- 
stance and nucleus of the whole human family, just as 
the embryo of all the oak forests was in the original 
acorn. Therefore He could be the Federal Head of 
the redeemed humanity that He was to bring back to 



IOO THE RATION AI, TEST 

God; therefore, too, He was able to pay the debt of the 
whole human race, composed of millions of beings, 
all sinners, making complete atonement for their ini- 
quities ; as the Scripture puts it, "tasting death for 
every man." This He could have done only by as- 
suming potentially human nature in its entirety. And 
He could have assumed human nature in its complete- 
ness only by means of the conception by the Holy 
Spirit in a virgin. We think, therefore, that the Bible 
doctrine of Christ's conception is vindicated. 

We desire here to touch upon another point that 
we have never seen explained or even hinted at in any 
of the works of theology or criticism that have come to 
our notice. It is this — that the conception of the Son of 
God took place by the Holy Ghosts Why was it the 
third person of the Holy Trinity that formed the em- 
bryo in the womb of Mary? Why did not the second 
person perform that function Himself ? Can an in- 
telligent answer be given to that question? We think 
it can. Here are the reasons : It would have been 
absurd for any kind of a being to conceive Himself. 
Such an anomaly is known nowhere in all the universe. 
It is reasonable to assume that when God made the 
world, He made it in something like consonance with 
the nature of His own being. He surely would not 
have made it in entire unlikeness to the laws of His 
own nature, for everywhere we find Him a God of rea- 
son and harmony and not of contradictions. There- 
fore, for one person of the Trinity to beget Himself 
would be opposed to the very constitution of things. 

Next, notice the unity in the entire Biblical system 
of truth. In the beginning God created all things, 
but it was the Spirit who brooded over the face of the 
deep and implanted the germs of primordial life. 
The earliest conception, therefore, in the world of na- 
ture took place by the Holy Spirit. To be consistent, 
the Spirit should also be the active agent in subsequent 



THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION OF CHRIST IOI 

conceptions, which would include the conception in the 
Virgin Mary. 

Furthermore, the new birth takes place through the 
active agency of the Holy Ghost. Whenever Christ 
is born in a human heart, the Holy Spirit originates 
the new, life. This agrees with the fact that the orig- 
inal conception of Christ in the nature of the virgin 
took place by the Holy Spirit. Once more, after 
Christ had ascended to God's right hand, He poured 
the Spirit upon the church both to implant the new 
regenerate life in the hearts of believers and to bear 
witness with their spirits to the Saviourship and re- 
deeming power of Jesus Christ. That is, the same 
Spirit who originally brooded over the Virgin Mary, 
forming the new, unique person of the God-Man, 
also implants that new life in us and bears testimony 
to His hypostatic character. What a consistent 
scheme is the Biblical one when properly and compre- 
hensively interpreted ! How matchless are the wis- 
dom and the grace that devised and carried out a plan 
whereby fallen humanity could be lifted up to the 
plane of divinity, joined with it in bonds of or- 
ganic and most precious unity and fellowship, and 
saved and glorified by this wonderful conjunction; 
while at the same time real atonement could be made 
for sin, the law of righteousness upheld, and God re- 
main just, and the justifier of everyone who accepts 
the divine-human Redeemer whom He so graciously 
provided ! 



VII 

THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION 

The fact that a divine incarnation is an important 
element in several of the great ethnic religions of the 
world, particularly of Buddhism, would seem to point 
to something in the constitution of human nature 
demanding such an act of the Supreme Being. It 
cannot be denied that the pro founder the religion and 
the better adapted to human need, the more likely it 
is to contain this doctrine as an essential part of its 
system. Nor should we fail to remember that "God 
hath not left Himself without a witness in any na- 
tion," and, therefore, the conception of an incarna- 
tion of the divine may be a part of that sporadic rev- 
elation which is still preserved in heathen nations — 
a glimmering remnant of the original disclosure that 
God vouchsafed to mankind. 

At all events, no one will deny that the doctrine of 
the divine incarnation is a vital factor in the Biblical 
system of truth. Should anyone challenge this state- 
ment, he would be compelled to do violence to a clear 
and positive Scriptural exegesis. For instance, in the 
first chapter of St. John's gospel there is the plain 
statement, "In the beginning was the Logos, and the 
Logos was with God, and the Logos was God;" and 
afterwards, in the same chapter, this declaration is 
added: "And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt 
among us." The logic is inevitable: the Logos was 
God; the Logos became flesh; therefore, God became 
incarnated. Paul also, in speaking of Christ, calls 
Him "God manifest in the flesh." 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION 103 

We take it for granted, therefore, without further 
argument, that the tenet of the divine incarnation is 
explicitly taught in the Bible. What, then, is its 
logical justification? While it could not have been 
discovered by unaided human intelligence, yet, having 
been revealed in the Holy Scriptures, we believe it 
can be shown to be consistent with reason — indeed, de- 
manded by a process of exact thinking. What is the 
method of reasoning by which this doctrine of Holy 
Writ can be supported? 

First, it is obvious that a breach had been made in 
some way between God and man. How this breach 
occurred has already been shown in the chapter re- 
lating to the fall of man. Everyone must realize, 
even by a cursory glance at the cosmos, that there is 
something wrong ; that man is not at peace with God ; 
that he fears Him and seeks to hide himself from 
Him, even as our first parents did immediately after 
their disobedience. This gulf between man and his 
Maker becomes so widened in some cases that men 
go so far as to doubt and deny the divine existence al- 
together. There is not that free, untrammeled inter- 
course that we would reasonably expect to find sub- 
sisting between the Creator and the rational beings 
He has created. One would naturally suppose that 
the relation between God and man would be one of 
sympathetic and delightful reciprocity; whereas, sad 
to say, it is one of constraint and often even of an- 
tipathy on man's part. 

Therefore, one of the following alternatives must 
be accepted: Either the atheist is right and there is 
no God, or a distressful alienation has occurred be- 
tween God and man. But the atheist must be in error, 
because if there were no God, surely man never could 
have formed a conception of a Divine Being; and, 
moreover, man could have no consciousness of es- 
trangement from Him, nor any sense of moral guilt on 



104 THE RATIONAL TEST 

account of that aversion. In consequence, we are shut 
up to the alternative that a breach separates between 
divinity and humanity. 

That being true, is it not evident that man cannot 
bridge the chasm? How could he? It is a moral 
chasm, and where would man, unaided, procure the 
ability to throw a passageway from this side to the 
other? For man it is an impassable gulf, deep and 
wide. But it would be possible for God, who, having 
done no wrong, still retains His infinite moral ability, 
to come across the gulf from His side to man's, and to 
span it with His power, justice and grace. Or suppose 
we change the figure somewhat, using terms that are 
more likely to be employed in theological discussions. 
Man suffered a lapse from his Maker — he fell. In 
that case how could man in his own strength lift him- 
self up to God again ? It would be an ethical impossibil- 
ity, just as it would be a physical impossibility for him 
to lift himself up through empty space. But God 
could come down to man, take him in the arms of 
His grace and power, and lift him up again to the 
plane of the divine. In other words, humanity was 
helpless through its lapse from divinity; then divinity, 
moved with love, came down to recover the fallen hu- 
man race. Is not that rational? Is it not what we 
would be justified in expecting from a wise and mer- 
ciful God? 

The incarnation of the Son of God, as set forth in 
the Holy Scriptures, meets every ethical and logical 
emergency of the situation — that is, divinity, in the 
person of the Logos, came down from heaven, as- 
sumed humanity in potential and seminal form, 
wrought righteousness therewith in a life of perfect 
obedience, made atonement for sin by vicarious suf- 
fering and death, rose from the tomb with that same 
humanity, then carried it to the right hand of God, 
•where it was glorified, filled with all the divine fullness, 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OK THE INCARNATION 105 

so that it became ubiquitous by virtue of its most per- 
fect personal union with the divine, being thereby em- 
powered to come into real and vitalizing contact with 
sinful humanity, and rescue, permeate, transfigure it 
with its own glorious life, power and grace. The 
point of contact between sinful humanity and the 
glorified humanity of our Lord is faith, engendered by 
the Holy Spirit sent from and by the glorified and ex- 
alted theanthropic person of the one Mediator and 
Redeemer. God bridged the chasm. It is a blessed 
doctrine — too good and beautiful not to be true. 

Thus it will be seen that the scheme of redemption 
disclosed in the Sacred Writings is more than logical, 
more than rational; it is altogether glorious and in- 
spiring. What an uplift it gives to the soul to con- 
template it! What a noble stamp it puts upon our 
humanity, sinful and bedraggled though it is, to know 
that the eternal Logos assumed and rescued it, and 
brought it back to the possibility of so marvelous a 
destiny ! 

Suppose we look at the doctrine of the incarnation" 
from another viewpoint : It was man, not angels, not 
a divine being, who had violated the divine law. 
Hence man should also pay the penalty and make the 
reparation. It surely would not be right nor rational 
for another kind of being than the transgressor to 
suffer the consequences of his sin. Therefore human- 
ity must pay that debt, must expiate that wrong. The 
divine Logos, by assuming humanity in potential 
form, enabled the very species of being who had per- 
petrated the offense to discharge the moral obligation 
and render propitiation and satisfaction to violated 
justice. Is not that also rational? And it was by 
virtue of the inseparable union of the divine with the 
human that a full equivalent for the sin of the whole 
race could be rendered ; for the union of divinity with 
humanity in Christ gave to the latter an infinite value 
and power and grace. 



106 THE RATIONAL TEST 

Another fact that makes a divine incarnation neces- 
sary is man's need of divine sympathy, of the most in- 
timate fellowship in his ruined and distressed con- 
dition. True, God might have assured him verbally 
of His sympathy, and the assurance would have been 
precious and helpful ; but, after all, man might well and 
justly have replied to such divine overtures : "Thou art 
great and mighty and divine, and hast therefore never 
felt the pangs of sin, the anguish of bodily and mental 
suffering, the distress of human limitation, and so Thou 
canst not enter into complete sympathy and touch 
with our sorrows. " Whether God needed the incar- 
nation to establish this bond of fellowship or not, we 
would not presume to assert; but surely man needed 
it in order to feel the assurance of divine compassion. 

It is possible to state clearly and concretely just 
how this need of the human soul is met in the incar- 
nation of the Son of God. Since He came in the flesh 
and suffered with and for the human race, every 
troubled heart can go to Him and claim a community 
of experience. With much comfort the contrite sin- 
ner can say: "We have not a High Priest who can- 
not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but 
One who was tempted in all points like as we are, yet 
without sin." In the abandonment of sorrow, we may 
go to Him with this comforting assurance : "Lord, 
Thou knowest what it means to suffer to the point of 
despair, for from Thy lips was wrung the cry, 'My 
God ! my God ! why hast Thou forsaken Me ?' " Even 
little children may carry their childlike grievances to 
Him, for He was once a child and knows the joys and 
sorrows of childhood. The youth may go to Him for 
help and compassion, for He passed through the try- 
ing ordeals of the juvenile and immature period; and 
matured life, carking care, pressing responsibility and 
the whole development and discipline of earthly ex- 
perience find in Him a sympathetic Friend in whom 
is grace to help in every time of need. 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION 107 

And do we not need a divine-human Friend as well 
as a divine-human Saviour? To put it more accu- 
rately, is not the very friendship of Jesus an elemental 
part of His work as the Redeemer of the human fam- 
ily? While this process of reasoning may not carry 
absolute conviction to the skeptical mind, yet surely 
much must be gained in removing obstacles to faith 
by a consideration of the fact that the divine Logos, 
in assuming human nature, became a Redeemer with 
whom a most intimate relationship of human sym- 
pathy has been established, thus making the incarna- 
tion something that is vital and organic in the recovery 
of mankind. It cannot be denied that in actual ex- 
perience many believers have received much comfort, 
strength and inspiration in feeling the sympathetic 
touch of the Divine One, who came in the flesh and 
took on Him the form of a servant. 

An excellent Christian woman of our acquaintance 
was devoted to helping the poor of the city in which 
she lived. Being wealthy, she and several of her 
rich and benevolent friends first went into the homes 
of penury, wearing their rich apparel and ornaments. 
They soon found, however, that the poor people shrank 
from them, abashed by the evidences of wealth in the 
attire of their visitors, so that no basis of mutuality 
could be found. To obviate the difficulty, the philan- 
thropic women imitated the example of their divine 
Master; they laid aside their rich habiliments, dressed 
themselves in plain garments, and then, in going about 
doing good, they found that they could much more 
easily win the confidence of their poor beneficiaries. 
So the divine Logos laid aside His glory and assumed 
the habiliments of the very beings He came to help 
and recover. Indeed, how could men look upon the 
face of the Infinite One unless He veiled His resplen- 
dence ? 

Furthermore, nothing forms so strong an incentive to 



I08 THE RATIONAL TEST 

human striving to realize the ideal life as the influence 
of example. Suppose God had simply revealed the 
law to sinful humanity, saying, "There is the standard 
of righteousness; strive to attain it." His command 
could have had the value of only a divine precept, 
which would, to be sure, have been of great signifi- 
cance to the race; but, after all, it would have lacked 
real inspiration to moral achievement, for it would 
have stood alone, without the help of a concrete ex- 
ample of high and holy living. Suppose now, for the 
sake of the argument, that God Himself — that is, the 
Logos — took upon Him our nature, placed Himself 
in the midst of a real human environment, with all its 
joys, sorrows and tests, lived a truly human life here 
on earth, and conquered sin and temptation in every 
conflict — who can estimate the value and inspiration 
of such an example in spurring the human family on 
to moral and spiritual endeavor? The teaching of 
Christ is of inestimable value to man, but when to it 
is added the influence of His example, its potency is 
multiplied many fold. In the upward striving of the 
race from paganism to Christianity, from sin to salva- 
tion, the Model Life has proved to be of great actual 
service. Many a Christian would have faltered in the 
struggle with evil had it not been for the influence of 
the copy set him by the Captain of his salvation. Thus 
reason and experience prove that the incarnation of 
the divine Logos is adapted to meet one of the deep- 
est needs of humanity, the need of a Model Life in a 
world of sin and trial, of a concrete example. This 
harmonizes with the teaching of the Scriptures, which 
set forth Christ as our "ensample." Would it not be 
like a merciful and gracious God to furnish a human 
copy of living, in perfect conformity with the divine 
law, for the inspiration and imitation of His fallen 
children ? 

Still deeper in the heart of humanity lies the need 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION IO9 

of a divine incarnation. Professions of love have 
their value ; deeds of love are still more impressive and 
effectual; but in both something is lacking in the ap- 
peal they make to the human heart, unless they cost 
the doer some sacrifice — that is, it is self-denying love 
that most powerfully affects and wins the human 
heart. How true this is in all human experience! 
One man loves another, and evinces his love in many 
ways ; but by and by there comes an occasion when he 
makes a real sacrifice for his neighbor, enduring pri- 
vation, suffering pain in his stead ; then and then only 
is the heart of the recipient really touched with the 
exhibition of neighborly affection, and all witnesses 
of the act of self-abnegation applaud it and the spirit 
it displays. 

God declared in the Scriptures that He loved His 
sinful, suffering children; He also proved His love 
by many acts of providence and revelation; yet the 
final appeal was lacking until He emptied Himself, 
took upon Him the form of a servant, and became 
obedient unto the death of the cross in man's behalf. 

A God who will limit Himself for man and suffer 
for him will display the deepest love and most effec- 
tually touch the hearts of the objects of His pity. Is 
it not an undeniable fact that all through the Christian 
centuries men and women have been persuaded, won, 
conquered by the pure, unselfish, self-denying love of 
God in giving His Son, and of the Son in assuming 
human nature and paying the penalty of human trans- 
gression in unspeakable suffering? Sacrificial love is 
the kind of love that really merits the name and makes 
effective appeal to the heart. 

This argument is forcibly expressed in a valuable 
work by Dr. A. W. Moore, entitled "The Rational 
Basis of Orthodoxy" (Houghton, Mifflin and Com- 
pany, Boston), page 234: 

'That the spirit of self-sacrifice is an element of the 



IIO THE RATIONAL TEST 

divine character may indeed be inferred from the fact 
that it has shown itself from time immemorial in hu- 
man nature, and is therefore presumably one of the 
ethical qualities that man is deriving from the parent 
Mind. There is a vast difference, however, in respect 
to stimulating power and winning influence between 
a potential and an actual beneficence. The world loves 
not those who would sacrifice themselves for others if 
they could find an opportunity, but those who have 
found one and used it. Between a character which is 
said to be capable of self-denial for others and one that 
has exhibited it, there is all the difference in respect 
to impressiveness and the power to excite imitation 
that there is between precept and example. It would 
seem to be certain, therefore, that God must manifest 
a love which can be believed to have cost Him supreme 
self-forgetfulness and privation, if He is to receive 
from men the highest quality of devotion which hu- 
man nature is able to evince. " 

At this point another thought is germane. Man 
finds it difficult to realize and comprehend the abstract 
and purely spiritual. Hence philosophical studies are 
usually among the last in the university curriculum. 
Now the Scripture teaches that God is a Spirit. Lu- 
ther's catechism defines Him as "a Spirit, uncreated 
and perfect/' How utterly impossible it is, however, 
to obtain anything like a clear conception of an in- 
finite Spirit, to whom we cannot ascribe time or space 
or form ! The fact is, the human mind soon abandons 
the attempt to grasp the idea. Who is God? What 
is God? What is God like? These are questions no 
one can answer. Most people, even the most intel- 
lectual and spiritual, regard the conception of the in- 
finite God merely as a Spirit, as an incomprehensible 
abstraction. This fact is a sad handicap to real com- 
munion with Him. If God can in some way help our in- 
firmity, can condescend to our weakness of apprehen- 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION III 

sion, will it not be gracious in Him to do so? If He 
is a loving God, is it not likely that He will devise some 
plan by which His rational and worshiping creatures 
may obtain a clearer view of Him? It would appear 
so. 

What more effective and convincing method could 
He employ than to come out of the purely spiritual 
sphere and manifest Himself in the physical and visi- 
ble realm? In other words, nothing He could do 
would be more appealing than to come down out of 
heaven, assume a tangible form, and make His abode 
with men ; so to speak, descend from the realm of the 
abstract into the realm of the concrete. In the Bibli- 
cal scheme of salvation and revelation through the in- 
carnate Logos we have this fundamental need of hu- 
man nature fully and graciously met. Christ is God 
come to us in concrete form. Therefore He can be 
apprehended. 

At this point another quotation from Dr. Moore's 
"The Rational Basis of Orthodoxy" will be apropos : 

"Another need associated with, if not involved in, 
the one just described, is that of divine companionship. 
There is something discouraging to the average mind 
in the thought of the gulf which separates the finite 
from the infinite. The enjoyment felt by the child 
in the society of its father, the encouragement which 
the private soldier derives from any friendship shown 
him by his commander-in-chief, the loyal devotion 
with which a peasant is inspired when he becomes 
an object of kindly interest to his sovereign, are re- 
peated and enlarged in the experiences of those who 
believe that God has entered into personal relations 
with them, and has not felt Himself too far above 
them to make Himself one of them." Then the au- 
thor refers to the theophanies of the Old Testament 
and of pagan literature, and concludes by saying: 
"They show the way in which God must come to men 



112 THK RATIONAL TEST 

in order to win them." And thus the Bible teaches 
that He did come in the incarnation. 

Profoundest of all, however, is the conception that 
the Logos took up humanity seminally by assuming it 
from the Virgin Mary, sanctified it, glorified it by ex- 
altation to the right hand of God and the transfigura- 
tion of the divine fullness, and now through it comes 
into direct contact with our lapsed humanity, the 
point of contact being our faith, implants the fructi- 
fying seed or power of the new life, and thus lifts 
humanity to its exalted and most glorious destiny. 

Joined with this view of the incarnation is the need, 
implanted deep in the bosom of humanity, of the ubi- 
quity of Christ's human nature. Such a power was 
imparted to it by virtue of the hypostatic union of the 
divine and human in the person of Christ, connoted 
with the sublime doctrine of the communicatio idio- 
matum. With this doctrine held clearly in mind and 
become a fact of religious experience, we have no occa- 
sion for stumbling over the doctrine of the sacra- 
mental presence and impartation of the glorified hu- 
manity of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. While 
it is in a sense a special presence which we term 
sacramental, because the ordinance is of a specific char- 
acter, yet the real presence of Christ in the Holy Sup- 
per is not different in kind or genus from His pres- 
ence at all times — the presence of His theanthropic 
person; for He Himself gives the assurance, "Lo, I 
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 

We would here propound the question how God 
could rescue, save and sanctify human' nature except 
by direct organic contact. Is it not true that, in the 
whole domain of nature, direct contact is required for 
fertilization, for development, for ultimate perfection ? 
What better way could God have devised for estab- 
lishing direct and organic contact with humanity than 
by a union of the divine and human in the person 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION 113 

of Christ and then bringing that divine-human person 
as a fructifying germ into real contact with the mass 
of humanity? It is surely a noble conception, worthy 
of divine wisdom, creditable to divine love. It is a 
"natural law in the spiritual realm" — better still, it is 
the same fundamental law running through both 
realms, thus making all the universe an organic unity. 

This conception will explain that somewhat enig- 
matical saying of Christ: "He that eateth My flesh 
and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me and I in him. 
As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the 
Father, so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." 
(John vi. 56-58.) Apply this passage to the preced- 
ing argument relative to the union of the divine and 
human in Christ and His direct living contact with the 
believer in faith, and its meaning will become as clear 
as the sunlight, and will be seen to be as philosophical 
as it is explicit. 

The same mode of reasoning may be applied to the 
restitution of the order of nature through the incar- 
nation of the Logos; for the Second Person of the 
Trinity assumed not only the form of humanity, but 
also the form of material nature. His body was a 
real body, its substance as real as that of our bodies 
and the same in kind, and therefore composed of the 
same material as the world of natural substance. By 
His exaltation to God's right hand, the incarnate 
Logos glorified a portion of the physical substance of 
the natural world, and that has become the transfigur- 
ing nucleus or germ or potency of the coming glori- 
fied earth. Hence the Scripture says (2 Pet. iii. 13) : 
"Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for 
new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth right- 
eousness." True, it is possible that God might have 
restored lapsed humanity and nature by a simple edict 
of His omnipotence ; but it would not have been an or- 
ganic recovery such as we have through the incarna- 
8 



114 TH E RATION AI, TEST 

tion, and would not, therefore, have been in harmony 
with the constitution of things as we know them. 

One thought more has a deep theological and philo- 
sophical significance. The human race must have a 
federal head. According to natural generation that 
head is Adam, the progenitor of the human family. 
Judged by the natural laws and constitutions as we 
know them in the world, what the primal ancestor of 
the race would be and do, that would be stamped in- 
delibly on all his progeny. The modern scientific idea 
of heredity would also lead to a like conclusion. But, 
as has been seen in a preceding chapter, Adam 
sinned and fell from God, and thereby, as federal 
head of the race, gave his descendants a tendency to- 
ward evil. What would be needed, now, in the nature 
of the case to rescue the humanity that has thus been 
corrupted? If in some way a new federal head could 
be constituted, would it not solve the problem both 
ethnically and ethically? Would not such a method 
be better than an arbitrary and artificial device ? Would 
not God, who does everything in the natural domain 
by the method of organic procedure, be likely to 
follow the same plan in the higher spiritual realm? 

According to the Bible, He has done so. A new 
federal head for the race was constituted when the di- 
vine Logos assumed human nature, bore it triumph- 
antly through life, temptation, death, the grave, raised 
it from the dead, and exalted and glorified it at God's 
right hand. By attaching themselves by faith to the 
new federal head of the race, believers become mem- 
bers of a redeemed and renewed human household. 

Is not this philosophical? It is precisely the teach- 
ing of the New Testament, which says (i Cor. xv. 
22 and 45) : "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive. . . . The first man Adam 
was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a 
quickening spirit." The first captain of the race 



THK RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION II5 

made a failure and led his followers to ignominious 
defeat; the second Captain, the Captain of our salva- 
tion, won a complete victory, and hence was placed 
at the head of the army of the redeemed and tri- 
umphant. 

Notice should be taken of an objection often urged 
against the Biblical doctrine of the hypostatic union — 
the union of the divine and human in the person of 
Christ. "How can these things be?" is the Nicode- 
mus-like question often asked. How can Christ be 
God and man at the same time? To some minds 
this seems to be not only an insoluble mystery, but 
a mystery too strange and unnatural to be believed. 
So far as refusing to accept a doctrine because it is 
mysterious is concerned, that course would lead to uni- 
versal doubt ; for everything which you try to analyze 
fundamentally is inexplicable. 

But let us see whether the incarnation of the Logos 
is a mystery that is irrational. Many wise scientific 
thinkers of the day accept the doctrine of the divine 
immanence, believing that God is in the natural uni- 
verse and in all parts of it. Indeed, if there is a per- 
sonal God — and we have already discussed the doc- 
trine of the divine existence — He must be immanent 
in His creation. But can we understand that? Well 
might we ask, How can God be in nature and yet no 
part of nature? No one can comprehend it. Not 
only so, but, unless we entertain the crude idea that 
God is only a spatial substance — in which case He 
would be no God at all, but merely an impersonal sub- 
stance like an ether — then He must be in every part 
of His dominion in all the fullness of His being. The 
tiny dewdrop, like the sun which it reflects, must con- 
tain Him. He must be personally present in the in- 
finitesimal as well as in the infinite. Who can com- 
prehend this mystery? Who can suggest even a pos- 
sible explanation of it? No one. Yet it must be so, 



Il6 THK RATIONAL TEST 

or we must abandon the idea of the divine existence. 
This being so, why should our intelligence be shocked 
and our faith made to stumble over the mystery of the 
union of the divine and human in Christ? 

There is also a union of the divine and human in 
the true believer. While it is not a personal union, 
as is that of the junction of the two natures in Christ, 
it is, after all, suggestive of it, and is little, if any, 
more explainable. The Christian declares that God 
dwells in his heart, reigns there. Similar are certain 
expressions of Scripture: "I in you, and ye in Me;" 
"He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bear- 
eth much fruit ;" "Christ in you, the hope of glory." 
Thus there is a sort of incarnation of the infinite in 
every true disciple of our Lord. But how can the infi- 
nite God dwell in a finite heart? You feel no special 
difficulty, however, in accepting the fact which is a mat- 
ter of actual experience with the believer ; but the mo- 
ment you attempt to explain it, or philosophize about it, 
or encase it in a scientific formula, you find yourself 
face to face with an inexplicable mystery. Why, then, 
should we marvel at the mystery of God manifest in 
the flesh in the person of Christ? If the omnipotent 
God can effect a mystical union with the believer, is it 
beyond belief that He can effect a personal and hypo- 
static union in Christ? 

Moreover, the believer \s conscious of the personal 
presence of God. It is not a mere impersonal force 
touching him. How can God be personally present 
with believers in all parts of the world at the same 
time? Verily the omnipresence of God is as pro- 
found a mystery as His specialized and incarnated 
presence in Christ. 

Some of the facts of psychology may afford an- 
alogies and illustrations of the divine incarnation. 
For example, a great mind does not necessarily 
dwell in a large brain. Some men of extremely large 



THE RATIONAL BASIS OF THE INCARNATION 117 

cranial dimensions have comparatively feeble intel- 
lects, and vice versa. More seems to depend on the 
quality than the quantity of the brain. Often the in- 
tensive is more potential than the extensive. 

Now, God is mind, for, as to essence, mind and spirit 
are the same thing. Does not the fact that a great 
human mind may dwell in a small human brain afford 
at least a hint of how it may be that the divine mind 
may take up His abode in a human form? So 
far as we know, mind does not have shape, density, 
dimension, or spatial limitation, but is a substance of 
quite a different order from material substance. 
Therefore its connection with material things need 
impose on us no intellectual difficulties. 

Another attribute of mind or of mental action may 
be noted here — that is, that thought is not subject to 
the limitations of space and time. Standing before 
an audience of many hundred people you may, if you 
can hold their attention, sway them at your will, send- 
ing their minds — or at least their thoughts — to many 
parts of the world and the universe in a few minutes, 
merely by suggestion. Tell them to think of Califor- 
nia, and at once every mind leaps over the interven- 
ing distance of two or three thousand miles to the 
Western State. Then suggest in quick succession 
Hawaii, Japan, India, Africa, the moon, Jupiter, Sat- 
urn, the sun, the most distant star, and every mind 
swings in immediate obedience to the various localities 
indicated, showing how little the mind's action can 
be circumscribed by time and space. If this is true 
of what we term finite mind, how much more wonder- 
ful must be the action of the Infinite Mind! There- 
fore, for God, the infinite Logos, to posit Himself in 
a special way in the humanity He assumed in the per- 
son of Christ, and yet at the same time be every- 
where present on earth and in heaven, ought to raise 
no real difficulty in the way of faith or intellectual 



Il8 THE RATIONAL TEST 

assent. It explains, too, that strange and otherwise 
inexplicable saying of Christ: "No man hath as- 
cended into heaven but He that hath descended out of 
heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven/' 

Possibly it may be objected that our illustration 
is faulty in this regard, that, after all, it is not the 
human mind, but only its product, human thought, 
that can traverse the distances between widely sep- 
arated points at a moment's notice. Our reply is, 
that, with the Infinite Spirit, mind and thought must 
be conterminous, for where God's thought is, there 
He must be also. Otherwise He would be finite, not 
infinite; relative, not absolute. For this reason the 
personal habitation of the divine Logos in the hu- 
manity of Christ is not irrational, finding analogies and 
illustrations in the domain of human experience. 

That is, the incarnation has a rational basis. It 
imposes no real obstacles to an intelligent faith. In 
order to accept it the thinker need not abrogate his 
reason nor stultify his intelligence. All of which en- 
courages us to believe that the other doctrines of Holy 
Writ, when they are properly apprehended, have a 
rational basis. 



VIII 

THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 

Perhaps no Biblical doctrine, save that of eternal 
retribution, has so often been called in question as 
the orthodox view of the atonement. The raison 
d'etre of the doctrine lies back in the realm of ontol- 
ogy, a domain that is difficult for most minds to enter 
and traverse, and that is perhaps the reason so many 
persons have stumbled over the difficulties. It is 
easier to take a superficial view, even though men may 
proclaim themselves the disciples of reason ; yet a 
slight and partial view of the atonement is fatal, giving 
wrong results in all cases. 

Before examining the rationale of the orthodox 
doctrine, let us notice some of the erroneous theories 
that are often held. You frequently hear men say 
glibly: "The atonement means nothing but at-one- 
ment; it is simply at-onement between God and man, 
nothing more, nothing less !" Now, that statement 
is somewhat catchy, because it is a play on words, a 
rhetorical figure that always attracts attention, and 
with some people it is the final argument. However, a 
moment's thought will show that it is no explanation, 
no reason. The crucial question is : Why and how is 
it that the life and death of Christ make at-onement 
between a holy God and sinful man. You will ob- 
serve that the utterer of the glib epigram will then 
have to rise and explain, and in doing so he will have 
to declare his view of the atonement, which you will 
usually find is not, after all, the Scriptural and or- 
thodox view. 



120 THE RATIONAL TEST 

More than that, the words "atonement" and "at-one- 
ment" do not mean the same thing. Whatever may 
be the etymological history of the word "atonement/' 
it is obvious that at the present day the idea of atone- 
ment does not convey the idea of mere at-onement. 
The words are not synonyms. Suppose that a man 
has committed a crime against his fellow-man or the 
civil statutes, and we say, "He has made ample atone- 
ment for his transgression," what do we mean? Sim- 
ply that there is now at-onement between him and the 
party he wronged? No, indeed! We do not mean 
that ; we mean a good deal more than that. We mean 
that he has made reparation, has rendered satisfaction, 
has in some way paid the penalty of his wrong-doing. 
It is only because he has made atonement for his 
crime that there is at-onement between him and the 
law. Therefore, you see that the maker of the 
blithe aphorism is not only superficial, but confuses 
cause and effect. 

It may be interesting to look at the lexicography of 
the word "atone" and its derivative, "atonement." Here 
before us is Webster's "International Dictionary," 
brought up-to-date. Let us consult it. The verb 
"atone," intransitive, is derived from at one. Then 
the first definition is : "To agree ; to be in accordance ; 
to accord." What then? This definition is marked 
obsolete. Therefore the word "atone" no longer 
means merely to be "at one." Then follows the sec- 
ond definition, which is not marked obsolete: "To 
stand as an equivalent ; to make reparation, compensa- 
tion or amends, for an offense or a crime." That is the 
idea that everybody entertains of making atonement. 
The verb in the transitive form yields the same results ; 
the first definition being : "To set at one ; to reduce to 
concord; to reconcile, as parties at variance; to ap- 
pease;" and this is also marked obsolete. The second 
definition, "to unite in making," is designated obsolete 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 121 

and rare. The third definition is the one that ob- 
tains to-day in good usage: "To make satisfaction 
for; to expiate;" then this line is quoted from Pope: 
"Or each atone his guilty love with life." 

What says the lexicon of the noun "atonement"? 
Definition one: "(Literally, a setting at one.) Re- 
conciliation, restoration of friendly relations; agree- 
ment; concord. (Archaic.)" Definition two, giving 
the real meaning of the word: "Satisfaction or repar- 
ation made by giving an equivalent for an injury, or 
by doing or suffering that which will be received in 
satisfaction for an offense or injury; expiation; 
amends; — with for. Specifically, in theology: The 
expiation of sin made by the obedience, personal suf- 
ferings and death of Christ." 

Webster's definitions give precisely the orthodox 
view of the atonement, and therefore etymology is not 
on the side of the epigram-maker. Atonement means 
much more than at-onement. We must go deeper. 

Of all the heretical views of the atonement none 
seem to make a stronger appeal to the human reason 
and heart than what is known as the moral influence 
theory. This may be accounted for, perhaps, on the 
ground of its apparent exaltation of the love of God 
— a view that has a most winsome quality. Any 
view that lays strong emphasis on the love of God is 
sure to attract much popular applause. 

What is this engaging theory of the atonement? 
It is this, that the life, sufferings, and death of our 
Lord exhibit the surpassing love of God to man in 
such a way as to win his affection and stir his con- 
science. Thus won and convicted, man becomes con- 
trite, repents of his sin and embraces the loving over- 
tures of pardon from the gracious heavenly Father. 
It is easy to see why this conception is so fascinating 
to certain classes of people, whose admiration can al- 
ways be won by a display of beneficence and love. 



122 THE RATION AI, TEST 

Is it a view that can be defended on the ground of 
reason and Scripture? To our mind, a fatal objection 
to this view is that it makes the sufferings of Christ 
spectacular. We use the term seriously, and not for 
the purpose of derision. If there was no real con- 
stitutional need for the passion of Christ, no inner 
necessity; if it was simply an arbitrary method in- 
vented by the Almighty for the purpose of displaying 
His love to man, then what other designation than 
the word "spectacular" can be applied to the atone- 
ment? Now, when Satan tempted Christ by request- 
ing Him to hurl Himself from the pinnacle of the 
temple for spectacular effect, He refused to do so, 
saying: "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord 
thy God." There is something repulsive to the human 
heart, after all, in love making a display of itself 
merely for the sake of the exhibition or the sensa- 
tional effect it will produce. Surely, when we come 
to think of it deeply, the revelation of love is much 
more effective if the display is rather incidental, while 
the deed is an actual service done for its own sake. 
So, if Christ really suffered for us, really saved us by 
doing something for us that had to be done to accom- 
plish our salvation, how much more potent is the ap- 
peal of the exhibition of His sacrifice! But if He 
suffered merely for the sake of making an exhibition 
of love, we turn away sadly and whisper under our 
breath, not wanting to be irreverent, "That display 
seems like affectation." 

Again, the moral influence view makes the atone- 
ment a mechanical contrivance, not a real and es- 
sential method of getting rid of sin and securing 
man's salvation. A moment's reflection will make this 
statement plain. If it was only an artifice for win- 
ning man's affection and was not actually necessary 
in the nature of things, you see clearly that it was 
only a "fixed up" scheme for compassing a result. 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 1 23 

Some other plan might have been devised, but God 
decided that this was the best one. When you come 
to think of it seriously and profoundly, do you want 
to be saved by an expedient? No; the moral in- 
fluence theory does not go deep enough; it does not 
touch the essentiality of things. 

Another erroneous view is what is known as the 
governmental theory. We permit another to state 
this view : "It is based upon the absolute sovereignty 
of God — that He, by virtue of His supreme will 
alone, can freely and entirely remit the guilt and pen- 
alty of sin. The right to relax the law's demands 
at will belongs to His prerogative as moral governor. 
But lest this encourage the sinner to transgress with 
impunity, Christ is allowed to suffer as a warning that 
sin shall not escape." (Dr. J. B. Remensnyder, "The 
Atonement and Modern Thought.")* 

The fatal objection to this view is the same as the 
one brought against the moral influence theory — it is 
a mechanical device, not a modus operandi grounded 
in ontology. The thought that Christ was punished 
when it was not really necessary for Him to bear the 
sinner's penalty is repellent to most minds. We would 
prefer the view that God relaxed the law's demands. 
Besides, we can find no Scripture to sustain this hypo- 
thesis. 

Then what is the true Biblical doctrine of the 
atonement? First, it includes the fact of vacarious 
obedience and suffering, or substitution; that is, that 
Christ suffered in our stead in order that we might be 
spared the penalty of our transgressions. To our 
minds, this is clearly the Biblical doctrine. "He was 
wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for 
our iniquities ; the chastisement of our peace was upon 
Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we 

* A most excellent work, comprehensive and thoroughly 
evangelical and written in a lucid style. 



124 THE RATIONAL TEST 

like sheep have gone astray ; we have turned every one 
to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the 
iniquity of us all." (Isa. liii. 5, 6,) If that does not 
mean that our Redeemer took our place and endured 
in our stead, it is hard to say what the language means. 
"For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew 
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of 
God in Him." (2 Cor. v. 21.) "Christ hath re- 
deemed us from the curse of the law, being made a 
curse for us." (Gal. iii. 13.) "Christ hath also once 
suffered for us, the just for the unjust." (1 Pet. iii. 
18.) "For I delivered unto you first of all that which 
I also received, how that Christ died for our sins." 
(1 Cor. xv. 3.) "Christ was once offered to bear the 
sins of many." (Heb. ix. 28.) "Who His own self 
bore our sins in His own body on the tree." (1 Pet. 
ii. 24.) "The Son of man gave His life a ransom for 
many." (Matt. xx. 28.) 

We are well aware that the opponents of the ortho- 
dox view try to explain away the substitutional force 
of these passages, and thereby give them an indefinite 
meaning; but we do not believe they can break down 
the clear, direct interpretation of language in that 
way. Take only one of the citations : "The Son of 
man gave His life a ransom for many." What do we 
understand by a ransom? We surely understand that 
one person must be given in the stead of another, 
and he must be regarded as a sufficient hostage. If 
our Lord gave His life a ransom for men, then He 
must have taken their place that they might be de- 
livered. Any other idea of a ransom is too vague to 
be entertained. 

Moreover, if the doctrine of substitution can be 
shown to be reasonable — nay, more, if it can be shown 
to be not unreasonable — there will be no difficulty in 
grasping the plain meaning of the Bible passages just 
cited. Is the orthodox view a rational one? 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 1 25 

First, the idea of vicarious enduring is not foreign 
to nature and human life as we know them to-day. 
'That this law enters into the ethical constitution of the 
world is shown by the fact that the course of nature 
rests upon the death of some that others may live, i. e., 
upon this principle of substitution or transference. " * 
Says Henry Drummond: "There is no reproduction 
in plant, animal or man which does not involve sacri- 
fice for others. " There is not a parent in the world 
who does not endure vicarious suffering a hundred 
times. The sacrifice that a mother makes for her 
children is lauded the world over; no one seems to 
think it unjust or irrational; on the other hand, noth- 
ing so profoundly stirs the human heart as the story 
of maternal self-abnegation. One man goes to war for 
another, and if the substitute goes without money and 
without price and loses his life in battle, everybody 
applauds the unselfish and heroic act. The conclu- 
sion, therefore, is this — that the idea of vicarious sac- 
rifice is not repugnant per se to the reason of mankind. 
Hence, if the Son of God voluntarily and lovingly took 
our burden of sin and guilt upon Himself, and really 
suffered for us and paid our debt, there is no good 
reason why we should feel an ethical shock, and 
should not joyfully accept the benefits of the divine 
and loving immolation. When one man pays an- 
other's debt, the beneficiary does not complain that it 
is unjust for one person to make sacrifice for another; 
he gladly and gratefully accepts the payment, and is 
ever after a friend of his benefactor. 

However, we frankly admit that we have not yet 
reached the pith of the objection usually made to the 
doctrine of substitution; and we must not fight shy 
of difficulties, if we are going to test orthodoxy by the 
rational process. The chief gravamen of the object- 

* Remensyder, in the admirable work previously quoted. 



126 THE RATIONAL TEST 

ors is this : How can the innocent justly be made to 
bear the sin and endure the penalty of the guilty? Is 
not that unethical? Do we not start back with a 
shock from the thought? And even if the innocent 
Redeemer did suffer the penalty of our sins, how could 
God rightfully, or even juridically, accept the sub- 
stitution, and clear the guilty parties? 

These are serious difficulties, and must be dealt with 
in a reverent and kindly way, and the barriers to rea- 
son and faith must overcome, if it is possible. Per- 
haps there is a point in the doctrine that must remain 
a mystery, at least for the present, just as there is 
something inexplicable about the commonest affairs 
of life. What we can hope to do, and all we can hope 
to do, is to show that the evangelical conception is 
neither unethical nor unreasonable. 

Our first remark is that the difficulty referred to did 
not seem to trouble the apostle Peter, though he did 
not attempt a philosophical explanation, for he says 
(i Pet. iii. 18) : "For Christ also hath once suffered 
for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring 
us to God." And when our Lord declared (Mark x. 
45), "For even the Son of man came not to be minis- 
tered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ran- 
som for many," He did not seem to be haunted with 
the thought that it would be unjust for Him, the In- 
nocent One, to suffer and die for the guilty race. 
Therefore, the trouble is not of the Bible's making, 
but is a difficulty raised by human speculation. 

Next, if it is impossible in any case for the innocent 
to endure the penal sentence due to the guilty, then 
no real atonement for man can be made, and man can- 
not be saved; he must pay his own debt, must suffer 
his own penalty. Do you ask why? Because it is 
impossible to conceive that God could simply lay aside 
His moral law, remit the penalty, forgive the sin, 
without any reparation, and yet maintain the honor, 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 127 

dignity, and inviolability of His righteous government. 
If He did so, it would be such a slight upon the eternal 
laws that He Himself established, laws that are es- 
sential to the upholding o± the universe, that even His 
subjects would cease to fear and respect them. How 
natural for them to put their thought in this way: 
"We need not fear to transgress God's laws, for if we 
do, we need only to repent, and He will waive the 
whole constitution of the moral universe in our be- 
half!" In that case we might patently ask why God 
ever framed a constitution at all ! 

Therefore, we maintain that, while there may be an 
insoluble element in the orthodox view, the objectors 
to that theory encounter a difficulty that is insuper- 
able. Presently we shall have more to say on this 
point. 

Now let us get into the heart of the great enigma: 
Can it ever be, per se, that the innocent can suffer 
and atone for the sins of the guilty? Still more, 
can it be that the guilt and penalty will be remitted, 
and the sinner saved? That brings us to the marrow 
of the question. Ordinarily such a transference could 
not rightfully take place. However, you can con- 
ceive, without any mental strain, of the following 
conditions: Suppose that the penalty of a sinful 
man's wrong-doing were imposed upon an innocent 
man, who takes it upon himself gladly and voluntar- 
ily. Suppose, now, that the guilty man, become con- 
scious of his sin and humbly penitent, voluntarily and 
joyfully accepts the sacrifice in his behalf, and by ac- 
cepting it becomes morally changed, a transformed 
man, a good and holy man, giving his deliverer the 
gratitude of his heart and the service of his life. Do 
not stop yet, but suppose, further, that his rescuer, 
after paying the penalty of the wrong-doer, should be 
released, then exalted to great joy and honor and 
glory, and enter into the sweetest fellowship with his 
morally transformed beneficiary. 



128 THE RATIONAL TEST 

Now, in all this transaction can you find anything 
that is wrong, anything that is unethical, anything that 
violates an intrinsic law of God and man? We think 
not. Well, that is precisely what the evangelical view 
imputes to the atonement wrought out for man by 
Jesus Christ. While between man and man, such an 
enactment would be impossible, with God it is not im- 
possible. It violates no ontological regulation. It is 
not a mechanical stratagem or makeshift. It accords 
with the nature of things. The whole difficulty van- 
ishes when we remember the morally transforming 
effect upon the sinner of accepting the atonement, and 
the subsequent glory of the Saviour Himself. It 
should always be remembered that when God imputes 
to the penitent and believing sinner the righteousness 
of the atoning Saviour, He also imparts regenerating 
and sanctifying grace to the sinner. Therefore, God 
can "be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in 
Jesus. " You see, the heavenly feature of the system 
is that God imputes righteousness and imparts grace 
only to those who repent of their sins and accept the 
atoning sacrifice by faith. The ethical adjustment 
on God's part effects an ethical transformation in the 
sinner's condition. 

Another serious question raised by the doubter is 
this : How could Christ in time, indeed, in only a few 
years, endure the just penalty of millions of people 
who were sentenced to eternal retribution? There 
are persons who assert baldly that such a transaction 
is impossible because it is inconceivable. This diffi- 
culty must not be lightly passed over. 

The Biblical writers, apparently, had no trouble with 
this inquiry. Heb. ii. 9 : "But we see Jesus, who was 
made a little lower than the angels for the suff- 
ering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that 
He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every 
man." Put the baldest literalism into your interpre- 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 1 29 

tation of this verse you may choose, and you will still 
be able to exclaim with Nicodemus : "How can these 
things be?" How could one man taste death for un- 
counted millions of people? The prophet did not 
stumble over the problem, for he states categorically: 
"The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." 
Listen to Paul (2 Cor. v. 19) : "God was in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their 
trespasses unto them." Hearken again to the same 
masterful voice (2 Cor. v. 14, 15) : "For the love of 
Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, that if 
one died for all, then were all dead ; and that He died 
for all, that they which live should not henceforth 
live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, 
and rose again." The refrain is kept up by John (1 
John ii. 2, American Revised Version) : "And he is 
the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, 
but also for the whole world" John the Baptist did 
not shrink from making the atonement world-wide 
(John i. 29) : "Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sin of the world." 

In order to make proper atonement it is not neces- 
sary that the penalty be enacted in precisely the same 
way, but simply that an equivalent be rendered. It 
requires but a moment's thought to see that this is 
true even in human affairs. If capital punishment is 
to be administered by the State, it matters not whether 
it be carried out by hanging, or electrocution, or in 
any other way that civilized countries may approve. 
So in the substitutional suffering of our Lord, it was 
necessary only that He render an equivalent in suffer- 
ing the punitive sentence pronounced upon the sinful 
race. 

This He was able to do by virtue of the peculiar na- 
ture of His person. First, Christ was the Son of 
Man, not the son of a man, but the Son of Man 
— that is, the Son of Humanity. By virtue of 



130 THE RATIONAL TEST 

the incarnation of the eternal and infinite Logos, He 
was able to take into His own being all humanity semi- 
nally. Strictly speaking, He did not assume a human 
nature, but human nature. , Just as all oak-trees were 
potentially involved in the first acorn, so all humanity 
was potentially involved in the humanity that the 
Divine Logos assumed. He was the Federal Head of 
the human race. Hence when Christ obeyed the law, 
all humanity in essence obeyed it; when Christ paid 
the penalty of the transgressions of the race, humanity 
essentially paid the penalty. Therefore it was Man 
that suffered the consequences of sin, just as had to 
be the case, because it was man that had violated the 
law. This indicates why an incarnation of the Logos 
was necessary. It was not a makeshift, not an ex- 
ploit, but an inner necessity. Now, as Christ's human 
nature included, seminally, all human nature, He 
was able to atone for the sins of the whole human 
family. Adam led all men into sin; why should not 
Christ lead them all to salvation? How profound 
and philosophical, therefore, are the words of Paul 
when he says (Rom. v. 19) : ''For as by one man's 
disobedience many were made sinners ; so by the obe- 
dience of one shall many be made righteous. " 

We have not yet fathomed all the depths of our 
Lord's atoning grace and power. He was not only 
the Son of Man; He was also the Son of God. He 
was the Divine-Human Person. This gave to His 
person an infinite value, and therefore an infinite 
value to His active and passive obedience. Thus 
when He obeyed the law for us, it was an infinite 
righteousness He wrought out ; when He received into 
His person the penalty of transgression, it was an in- 
finite suffering that He endured, making an infinite 
redemption. Therefore our Saviour rendered an 
equivalent for human transgression in His atoning 
work. 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 131 

Some hint of the comparative value of a man and 
of the Son of God may be apprehended by remem- 
bering of how much more value the life of a man is 
than that of any member of the lower creation. While 
we slaughter animals with impunity for the purpose 
of sustaining human life, the man who ruthlessly takes 
another man's life must, in many of the States, suffer 
a death penalty. All we need to remember to make 
the comparison effective is that Christ was God as well 
as man. It is the conjunction of the divine with the 
human in the person of Christ that gives to all His 
acts an infinite value. 

Several other elements enter vitally into the re- 
deeming work of our High Priest to make it com- 
plete. They are expiation, satisfaction, and propitia- 
tion. The expiation works the satisfaction, and the 
satisfaction effects the propitiation. When expiation 
has been made for sin, the justice of God is satisfied 
and propitiated, so that God's mercy and pardon can 
flow down unhindered upon the sinner, providing he 
accepts them. 

In the foregoing discussion it has been shown that 
the idea of vicarious expiation is not repugnant to 
reason; also that Christ, being both God and man, 
could make complete atonement — or what is the same 
thing, expiation — for the sins of the human race. It 
now remains to be seen why expiation w T as necessary. 
At this point, issue must again be tak'en with the op- 
ponents of the evangelical view, for they aver that no 
reparation for a broken law was needed, but that God 
could simply forgive out of pure love. All He needs 
to do is to lay aside His anger and justice and let His 
love flow unimpeded from His fatherly heart. 

That is an easy way, apparently, and appeals to 
sentiment; but it is superficial. It does not take into 
account the nature of a moral government. Suppose 
a judge, touched by the tears of the criminal at the 



1 32 THE RATIONAL TEST 

bar, should simply remit the crime and allow the of- 
fender to go unpunished, how could good order and 
good government be maintained in the State? That 
is a point that cannot be passed over so readily and 
glibly in our effort to bring the plan of salvation be- 
fore the bar of reason. 

Let it be remembered at this juncture that God wants 
His love to flow out freely toward sinners; that di- 
vine love is the source and foundation of the atone- 
ment ; that "God so loved the world that He gave His 
only begotten Son." However, if God is to remain 
God, the God of holiness, His love must go out to His 
creatures in righteous ways. He dare not do wrong, 
dare not violate His own laws of righteousness, even 
though the object be to pardon and save the sinner. 
No! God will not save man at all, if He cannot save 
him righteously ; for that would vitiate the whole moral 
government of the universe. No one can fail to see 
that one error, one wrong act on God's part, would 
hurl the universe to ruin. That, we take it, is the 
reason God would not save man without the atone- 
ment, without satisfaction; it was demanded by the exi- 
gencies of God's nature and the constitution of a 
moral government. Reflect for a moment. What 
kind of a transaction would that be which wbuld en- 
deavor to rescue man from sin to righteousness by 
violating the law of righteousness? To put it more 
aptly, if possible, could God effect an ethical salvation 
by employing unethical means? 

Now God's law had been violated by man's disobe- 
dience. Justice, an infinite attribute of God — an at- 
tribute, too, that holds His character in perfect moral 
balance — demands that the sinner be punished. If 
the sinner is to be spared, it can be only because the 
requirements of justice can rightly be met in some 
other way than by the transgressor's punishment. We 
have shown that Christ could rightfully and right- 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 1 33 

eously suffer the penalty in man's stead, thus making 
complete satisfaction to justice and permitting God's 
mercy to flow in an unobstructed and ethical channel 
upon man. Justice was not waived aside to let mercy 
past; no, its demands were fully satisfied so that it 
could join with mercy in seeking man's reclamation. 
Indeed, it would have been unjust not to save man 
after expiation had been made. To our mind, this 
plan seems to be not only infinitely wise and bene- 
ficent, but also necessary in the very nature of things. 

Had God set justice violently aside, He would 
have thrown contempt on His own laws ; had He done 
that, He could not have expected His rational creat- 
ures to respect them. Thus He would have sub- 
verted the ends of His government. However, the 
course that God pursued proves to all His intelligent 
creatures that He has supreme regard for His own 
laws, that He will maintain His government in right- 
eousness, and that, therefore, His commandments can- 
not be broken with impunity. True, you may obtain a 
view of the majesty and inviolability of God's law 
amidst the thundering and lightning of Mount Sinai: 
but you will be still more impressed with its sacred 
character if you will behold the sacrifice of God's 
only begotten Son on Calvary. The reasoning is this : 
If punitive justice was visited upon God's beloved 
Son to make expiation for the broken law, how dili- 
gently should we keep that law! If God honors His 
own law, He may rightly expect angels and men 
to honor it, too. Besides, men will always respect a 
God who is sturdy, firm, and erect in His uprightness; 
they could not respect a God who was impelled by 
mere sentiment. 

There are people who misinterpret the orthodox 
view in this way — they declare its teaching to be that 
God's anger had to be placated by the immolation of 
His Son. They seem to think that we look upon God 



134 THE RATIONAL TEST 

as a vindictive being, whose resentment had to be 
appeased in some way; and so, instead of wreaking 
it upon man, He wreaked it upon Christ. No intelli- 
gent evangelical thinker ever harbored such a barbar- 
ous conception. It is simply a man of straw. We 
do not believe that God hates anybody, however much 
He may dislike men's sins. He hates sin, but loves 
the sinner, loves him so much that He sent His only 
begotten Son into the world to save the guilty. "He 
is not willing that any should perish, but that all 
should come to repentance. ,, 

The satisfaction that was rendered in the atoning 
work of our Lord was made to the eternal principle of 
justice; not to the sentiment of anger and acerbity. 
The expiation was of such a character that the de- 
mands of justice were fully met, God's government 
was upheld in righteousness, and an unobstructed 
channel opened for the descent of God's mercy and 
grace upon the penitent sinner. Well may it be said 
that on the cross "mercy and truth are met together; 
righteousness and peace have kissed each other." 
Man is happily saved because he is ethically saved. 

When the Scriptures speak of the wrath of God, 
they mean His just anger against sin, which is the 
only thing in His universe that He hates. 

And such righteous indignation is entirely in accord 
with the holy nature of God. Suppose that sin did 
not stir His indignation, what kind of a God would 
He be? A God who is indifferent to sin, who has no 
emotion regarding it, cannot be the God who rules 
a universe of love and law like the one which we in- 
habit. How could it then be said: "Righteousness 
and justice are the foundation of His throne"? (Ps. 
xcvii. 2, American Revised Version.) 

In Dr. Heinrich Schmid's "Doctrinal Theology of 
the Evangelical Lutheran Church," American trans- 
lation, there is so admirable a statement of the phil- 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 135 

osophy of the scheme of redemption that we are fain 
to quote it : 

"If the wrath of God, which rests upon men on ac- 
count of their sins, together with all its consequences, 
is just and holy, then it is not compatible with God's 
justice and holiness that He should forgive men their 
sins absolutely and without punishment, and lay aside 
all wrath, together with its consequences; not com- 
patible with His justice, for this demands that he hold 
a relation to sinners different from that He holds to- 
ward the godly, and that He decree punishment for 
the former ; not with His holiness, for in virtue of this 
He hates the evil ; finally, it is not compatible with His 
truth, for He has already declared that He will punish 
those who transgress His holy law. If God, there- 
fore, under the impulse of His love to men, is still to 
assume once more a gracious relation to them, some- 
thing must first occur that can enable Him to do this 
without derogating from His justice and holiness; 
the guilt that men have brought upon themselves by 
their sins must be removed, a ransom must be paid, 
an equivalent must be rendered for the offense that 
has been committed against God; or, what amounts 
to the same thing, satisfaction must be rendered. 

"Now, as it is impossible for men to render this, we 
must extol it as a special act of divine mercy that God 
has made it possible through Christ, so that He might 
render this satisfaction in our stead. In Him, namely, 
who is God and man, by virtue of this union of the 
two natures in one person, everything that He accom- 
plishes in His human nature has infinite value; while 
every effort put forth by a mere man has only re- 
stricted and temporary value. 

"Although, therefore, a mere man cannot accom- 
plish anything of sufficient extent and value to re- 
move the infinite guilt that rests upon the human 
race, and atone for past transgressions ; yet Christ can 



136 THE RATIONAL TEST 

do this, because everything He does and suffers as 
man is not simply the doing and suffering of a mere 
man, but to what He does there is added the value 
and significance of a divine, and, therefore, an infinite 
work, in virtue of the union of the divine and the hu- 
man natures, and their consequent communion; so 
that, therefore, there can proceed from Him an act of 
infinite value which He can set over against the in- 
finite guilt of man, and therefore remove this guilt. 
In Christ, the God-man, there is therefore entire 
ability to perform such a work, and in Him there is 
also the will to do it. 

"A twofold work, however, is to be accomplished. 
The first thing to be effected is that God cease to re- 
gard men as those who have not complied with the de- 
mands of the holy Law. This is done when He who 
is to render the satisfaction so fulfills the entire law 
in the place of men that He does that which man had 
failed to do. Then it must be brought about that 
guilt no longer rests upon men for which they deserve 
punishment ; and this is accomplished when He who is 
rendering satisfaction for men takes the punishment 
upon Himself. Both of these things Christ has done ; 
the first by His active obedience (which consisted in 
the most perfect fulfillment of the law), for thereby 
He, who in His own person was not subject to the 
law, fulfilled the law in the place of man; the second 
by His passive obedience (which consisted in the all- 
sufficient payment of the penalties that were awaiting 
us), for thereby He suffered what men should have 
suffered, and so He took upon Himself their punish- 
ment, and atoned for their sins in their stead. 

"Through this manifestation of obedience to the di- 
vine decree in both these respects, Christ rendered, in 
the place of man, a satisfaction fully sufficient and 
available for all the sins of all men, to the praise of 
divine justice and mercy, and for the procurement 
of our justification and salvation." 



THE ATONEMENT A VICARIOUS SACRIFICE 1 37 

Nothing need be added to this clear and compre- 
hensive statement of the evangelical conception of the 
atonement. However, an objection may here occur 
to some minds. Does not this view exalt the divine 
justice and give it precedence over the divine love? 
The reverse is the case. True, in our discussion 
more has, perhaps, been said about justice and right- 
eousness than about love, but that is because the ob- 
jections have been of such a character as to make nec- 
essary the vindication of the justice of God, which 
the advocates of the moral influence theory are apt to 
overlook entirely, forgetting that justice, like love, is 
an infinite divine attribute. It remains to be said that, 
while we dare not say over-confidently that one infi- 
nite attribute takes precedence over another, yet it 
would seem to us that divine love is the fountain from 
w r hich the plan of redemption sprung. Indeed, in 
view of man's sin, it was divine love joined with di- 
vine wisdom that found the heavenly method of spar- 
ing man and at the same time satisfying the claims of 
justice. The idea is not that God was primarily bent 
on satisfying justice, but that His first and ultimate 
purpose was righteously to satisfy justice in order that 
He might save man. Hence it is forever true that 
"He first loved us." It was love that found the way. 
It was warm, full, free, pulsating, celestial love — but 
not sentimental love. Hence it was love that wrought 
side by side and hand in hand with eternal righteous- 
ness. 

It will not be time and effort spent in vain to try 
to clear up another difficulty that the skeptical world 
is apt to find in the scheme of redeeming grace. It is 
this — that Christ's death on the cross did not, after all, 
save us from bodily dissolution; we still have to pay 
the "debt of nature." That is true. Death still 
reigns in the earth for reasons, no doubt, that approve 
themselves to God. But Christ's atonement does save 



138 THE RATIONAL TEST 

us from eternal physical as well as spiritual death, for 
at the final day of judgment our bodies shall be resur- 
rected and glorified and enter upon a career of ever- 
lasting honor and glory. Thus it is proved that Christ 
did save us from death in every phase. Man is to be 
wholly saved, through the work and merits of re- 
deeming grace. 

We observe, too, that reconciliation between God 
and man is effected by the atonement. First, man's 
heart is won by the display of love on the part of both 
Father and Son; also by the fact that this adjustment 
secures man's salvation in an ethical way, without de- 
rogation of the moral government of the universe; by 
the fact, in addition, that the method of atonement 
was not merely a mechanical and artificial device, but 
a real, vital, organic procedure — the only way by 
which redemption could have been wrought. Then, 
there is a sense in which God was also reconciled ; not 
that His anger had to be appeased or placated; no! 
no! but that His justice, having been outraged and His 
righteous laws trampled upon, juridical satisfaction 
had to be rendered before God's mercy could have a 
free channel in which to flow down to man the sinner. 
This, we think, agrees with the whole analogy of 
faith regarding the doctrine of reconciliation. When 
we reach heaven, we shall be able to laud both the 
love and the justice of God. That will be salvation 
indeed. 



IX 

THE NEW BIRTH : WHY NECESSARY ? 

It might be thought at first blush that if Christ 
made atonement for our sins, then rose from the dead, 
ascended to God's right hand, was glorified, and now 
comes into direct contact with man in His ubiquitous 
theanthropic person, that is all that would be neces- 
sary for man's complete redemption, and therefore 
that the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration would 
be superfluous. Why, in addition to atoning mercy, 
is regenerating grace needed for man's recovery? In 
other words, why must man be born again? 

Presently we shall give some practical reasons why 
such spiritual re-making is necessary, but just now 
we are concerned with its fundamental necessity — 
its necessity in the very nature of things. First, then, 
since God is a Trinity, and the Father and the Son 
have so prominent a share in man's redemption, it 
would be only rational to infer that the Holy Spirit 
would also have some part in this beneficent work. 
What is that part, and is it fundamentally essential? 
It surely is, and from the following consideration: 
After the atonement was made by the incarnate Logos, 
and He had ascended to God's right hand, justice was 
satisfied, the government of God was upheld in right- 
eousness, and therefore all obstructions were removed, 
so that the grace of God could be poured forth freely 
upon man for his recovery. Right at that juncture 
something was necessary before our Redeemer in His 
glorified theanthropic person could come into vital 
contact with sinful man — with man who was "dead 



140 THE RATIONAL TEST 

in trespasses and sins." Since man's spirit is the 
center of his ethical being, the very life of his life, and 
since salvation is pre-eminently an ethical transaction, 
it stands to reason that he must be spiritually awak- 
ened and enlightened in order to receive and apprehend 
the things of Christ and accept Him by faith. Right 
there is the juncture where the work of the Holy 
Spirit is needed — to create the new life. And why 
can the Spirit only perform this blessed function? 
Because man must be touched and awakened in his 
inmost spiritual life, in the very depths of his being, 
the holy of holies in his soul, and therefore that sub- 
sistence of the Holy Trinity known as the Holy Spirit 
must compass that work. Our Lord Himself told His 
disciples that the Paraclete would come and do a work 
that He Himself was unable to do. While all the per- 
sons of the Trinity work together for the accomplish- 
ment of every object, yet there are points where each 
has His distinctive function to perform. Note, now, 
when man has been re-born by God's Spirit, operating 
through the means of grace, particularly the Word 
and Baptism, he is in an ethical state of soul to accept 
Christ's atoning sacrifice as the ground of his justifi- 
cation and Christ Himself as his Redeemer and 
Friend. Then the mystical union has been effected, 
and man is on his way to complete glorification 
through contact with Christ. Had not the Holy 
Spirit first imparted life to the sinner, Christ would 
have attached Himself to a spiritual corpse, if He had 
come in contact with man at all. Thus it will be seen 
that God, in devising a plan for man's moral and phy- 
sical recovery, has established vital contact at every 
successive point. There are no gaps, no cleavages, in 
the blessed work of redeeming grace from beginning 
to end. All is vitalized; all organic. 

Moreover, in performing the function of implanting 
the new life in man's soul, the Holy Spirit is consist- 



THE NEW BIRTH: WHY NECESSARY? 141 

ently doing the work in the world's history that per- 
tains to His office. Originally, He brooded over the 
face of the deep, implanting the seeds of primordial 
life on the earth, the orginator of physical vitality; 
then when the Logos was to be incarnated, the Holy 
Spirit entered into the Virgin Mary's being and pro- 
duced the conception of the divine-human life of our 
Lord ; lastly Pie enters into man's soul, and establishes 
the new life of salvation, making man a new creat- 
ure in Christ Jesus. 

In the next place, let us look at some of the practical 
aspects of the new birth, to see whether it cannot 
in many ways be justified on the ground of reason. 
When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, and heard 
about the doctrine of the new birth, he was greatly 
mystified. He could not understand what Christ 
meant by being "born again." This leads us to ob- 
serve that Nicodemus was an educated man. He had 
doubtless attended the best schools of the land, had 
perhaps sat at the feet of teachers like Hillel and 
Gamaliel, was instructed in the Old Testament, and 
had become a member of the celebrated Jewish San- 
hedrim. Our Lord Himself called him a "master in 
Israel. " Yet in spite of his culture, he was sorely 
puzzled over Christ's teachings about the new birth, 
exclaiming: "How can these things be?" 

This leads to another observation : A man may have 
a vast amount of secular knowledge, may be, indeed, 
a very savant, and yet may not be able to recite the 
rudiments of the spiritual life. It is ^ sad to think 
about — that a man may be a sage in earthly know- 
ledge and scarcely an abecedarian in heavenly lore. 
Some one has put it rather poetically, but none the less 
truthfully, in the following way, which we state in 
our own language : A man may be a great botanist, 
able to name all the trees and plants and flowers of 
garden, field, and woodland, and yet may not be able 



142 THE RATIONAL TEST 

to find the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. 
A man may be a learned geologist, able to name all the 
various strata of the earth's formation, and classify 
all the rocks and fossils, and yet may not be able to 
take his stand on the Rock of Ages. A man may be 
an erudite astronomer, exploring the heavens with his 
telescope, giving names to all the stars, planets, and 
constellations, discoursing learnedly about their char- 
acter and movements, and yet he may not be able to 
discover the Star of Bethlehem. Once again, a man 
may be a profound mathematician, able to solve the 
most difficult and complicated problems, and yet may 
not be competent to solve the problem of how much 
it will profit a man to gain the whole world and yet 
lose his own soul. 

All of which proves that spiritual things cannot 
be apprehended and discovered by the unaided intel- 
lectual faculties. Education and culture have their 
place and their use, and a noble vocation is theirs; 
but it was never intended that they should usurp the 
teaching of the Spirit of God, or render that tutelage 
unnecessary. Christ was simply stating an elemental 
truth when He said to Nicodemus: "That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit." No less fundamental is the teaching 
of the apostle, who says : "The natural man receiveth 
not the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are fool- 
ishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because 
they are spiritually discerned. " In making these 
statements Christ and Paul were not making arbitrary 
asseverations, but were simply averring what is true 
in the vefy nature of things. 

Now, this is the raison d'etre of the new birth. It 
might be asked, Why is the birth from above neces- 
sary? The only answer that can be given is this, Be- 
cause it is. Why is it necessary to eat, drink and 
breathe in order to live? Simply and solely because 



THE NEW BIRTH: WHY NECESSARY? 143 

human life is so constituted. The same categorical 
statement is to be made relative to the necessity of the 
new birth. By his natural birth, man comes into being 
without the true knowledge of God, in what we call 
the natural or carnal, or, if you please, the depraved 
state; and in order to be brought into the right rela- 
tion with God, he must have another birth, a spiritual 
birth. If conditions are fair, he may make a pretty 
good natural man without this added spiritual endow- 
ment ; but he cannot be a spiritual son of God. Not only 
does the Bible teach this doctrine explicitly, but experi- 
ence has corroborated it in thousands of concrete cases. 
Men have gone on for years in spiritual darkness ; then 
the light of God shone into their minds and they became 
new creatures in Christ, with new knowledge, new af- 
fections, new aspirations, new hopes. When the Psalm- 
ist prayed : "Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold 
wondrous things out of Thy law," he knew what he 
was talking about; because he knew that, until God 
should open his soul's eyes, he would be blind to spirit- 
ual truth. 

Some years ago an unbeliever, much given to de- 
rision of the Christian system, made sport of the Bible 
because it taught that a man "wasn't born right the 
first time, and so had to be born again!" Such ridi- 
cule simply advertised the superficial thinking of the 
giber, as well as the shallow nature of his study of 
mankind. Cannot everyone see that there is some- 
thing amiss with man in his natural state? How else 
will you account for the universal wickedness of the 
world? Is it because men are simply willfully per- 
verse? No, it must be because there is something in- 
herently wrong with the constitution of human na- 
ture. Besides, every man who is honest with himself 
must realize in his own consciousness that there is 
moral discord in his own heart. He knows that he is 
not in complete harmony with himself, with his sur- 



144 TH ^ RATIONAL TEST 

roundings, or with God. All of which simply proves 
that man is not born right the first time, and that, 
therefore, he must be born again. No ; the new birth 
is not an arbitrary arrangement; it is a constitutional 
necessity. 

In nature we have the law of biogenesis — the law 
that life can come only from antecedent life. So far 
as scientists have carried their researches there is no 
exception to this law. The same law obtains in the 
•spiritual world — that is, spiritual life can proceed only 
from antecedent spiritual life, which must first be im- 
planted by the Spirit of God. 

The doctrine and experience of regeneration have 
been surrounded with such an atmosphere of aw ful- 
ness, almost of terror, that many persons shrink from 
it with fear. Regeneration should not be looked 
upon as something "awful." While we cannot under- 
stand the mystery of it, any more than we can under- 
stand the mystery of anything else, whether in the 
physical or spiritual realm; yet the fact itself is com- 
paratively simple, natural in the best sense of the 
term, and sweetly reasonable. 

In the first place, why should coming to God be re- 
garded as something terrible, something adapted to 
frighten the soul? Does not the Bible call Him "our 
Father ?" Is there anything very frightful about the 
child coming to its earthly father even for forgive- 
ness? Perhaps the highest type of human love is 
the love of a mother, so gentle, so clement, so for- 
giving. Yet God is represented as more loving even 
than a mother, for the Scripture says that a mother 
may forget her child, but God will not forget us. 
Suppose the child has committed a wrong against his 
mother. His conscience upbraids him, and he feels 
penitent. Is it something terrible to go to his mother 
and say: "Mother, I did wrong; I'm sorry; will you 
forgive me?" Is there anything more natural and 



THE NEW BIRTH: WHY NECESSARY? 1 45 

reasonable than that? And must the child go down 
on his knees, and moan and weep and call at the top 
of his voice to make his mother hear, and must he 
continue his supplications for days and nights? No, 
indeed! Scarcely has he uttered the first broken 
syllable of contrition before the mother puts her arms 
about his neck, and kisses away his tears, and breathes 
her forgiveness into his ear. Now, if God is more af- 
fectionate and lenient than a mother, ought it to be 
looked upon as something terrifying for the contrite 
sinner to come to Him for pardon? It would seem 
to be a comparatively simple act. 

We should remember, too, that God wants to for- 
give us. He is many, many times more willing and 
anxious to forgive us than we are to be forgiven. Do 
you ask for the proof of this? He gave His only be- 
gotten Son for that express purpose — that He might be 
able to forgive us without doing violence to the law of 
righteousness. Now, if He gave His only Son that 
He might forgive us, does not that prove that 
He is exceedingly desirous of bestowing pardon upon 
us? And if He wants to forgive us, would it not be 
a strange paradox if, when we come to Him for par- 
don, He would refuse to grant it? 

The method sometimes employed for securing the 
conversion of sinners conveys the impression that God 
is hard to persuade, that He is all but deaf to the sin- 
ner's petitions, that you must call loudly to make Him 
hear, and must continue to agitate and supplicate a 
long time to convince Him that He should redeem 
His promise of pardon and grace. All of this creates 
and strengthens the popular idea that God is stern 
and unloving, far away, almost inaccessible. This is 
not the Biblical conception of God's disposition, for 
He is represented in the Scriptures as "ready to for- 
give and plenteous in mercy;" "long-suffering to us- 
ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all 
10 



146 THE RATION AI, TEST 

should come to repentance." To come to God, there- 
fore, and expect to have to argue with Him, and per- 
suade Him, and convince Him by vociferous and long- 
continued supplication, to forgive and regenerate us, 
is something more than a mere "work of supereroga- 
tion;" it is a virtual questioning of His goodness, 
doubting His veracity, making our way hard through 
our misconception of His loving kindness. How 
much* better to come to Him simply, quietly, trust- 
fully, and say: "Father, I have sinned; forgive me," 
and then believe that He does forgive, because He 
promises that He will. God wants to be trusted; He 
wants to be believed. 

True, sometimes the sinner has to struggle. But 
let it be remembered that the struggle is with himself, 
not with God. God often, no doubt, permits the 
struggle to go on for awhile, till the penitent sinner 
comes to the point when He sees that all his prayers 
and agitation cannot bring the answer or merit the 
grace, but that he must simply trust God, surrender 
to Him, believe His word and promise of pardon. 

Perhaps the simplicity of the new birth might be il- 
lustrated from the natural world in connection with 
a human act. For if, as the Bible teaches, man is 
made in the image of God, we may expect man to do 
some things in God's way. Suppose you want to have 
a garden of choice vegetables and flowers. After the 
soil has been prepared you would not allow it to lie 
idle and grow up in weeds. You would plant the 
proper kinds of seeds in the tilth, and presently they 
would germinate and grow, and soon you would have 
a garden after your own idea. Now the human heart 
is a moral garden. Naturally it is wild and unculti- 
vated, a good deal grown up with weeds. If it is to 
be converted into a garden for God and spiritual fruit- 
age, the soil must first be prepared by repentance, con- 
trition and faith ; then God must deposit in it the seeds 



the new birth: why necessary? 147 

of the spiritual life, which must be encouraged to 
grow up into the fruition of a rich and ripe Christian 
character. Looked at in the light of that illustration, 
the new birth seems to be a simple and natural proc- 
ess. 

The experience of regeneration may be illustrated in 
another way. You will remember the Bible story of 
man's creation — how God first formed his body out 
of the finest material of the ground, then breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a 
living soul. Something after that order takes place 
in a man's regeneration. First, there is the natural 
man — but the Scriptures represent him as "dead in 
trespasses and sin." What must be done to vitalize 
him spiritually? God by His Spirit must breathe into 
his soul the breath of the new life, so that he may be- 
come a new creature. This illustration is all the more 
apposite because our Lord likens the process of the 
new birth to the operation of the wind, which "blow- 
eth where it listeth." Nothing to terrorize about the 
doctrine and experience of regeneration! It is all 
simply natural and sweetly reasonable. 

Our next thought is — we should not stumble over 
the mystery of the birth from above. You remember 
what Christ said to Nicodemus when the latter was 
puzzling over the incomprehensible character of the 
new birth, exclaiming, "How can these things be?" 
Christ said to him: "Marvel not that I said unto thee, 
Ye must be born again." And then He drew an an- 
alogy from the wind, which Nicodemus could not un- 
derstand, either. Do not let the mystery of it be a 
stumbling-block to your faith. 

There are people who do not want to accept spirit- 
ual facts because they are mysterious. They say they 
cannot believe in God because they cannot see Him, 
feel Him, comprehend Him. They cannot believe in 
spirit because they can form no conception as to what 



148 THE RATION AI, TEST 

spirit is. We would ask whether they know what 
matter is. If they do, it might be well for them to 
step forward and enlighten the world by saying just 
what matter is. When it comes to the ultimate analy- 
sis, no one knows what material substance is, any more 
than he knows what spiritual substance is. Not the 
wisest philosopher in the world can give a definition 
of matter. 

True, it is said that matter is composed of atoms. 
But what is an atom? Does anybody know? Has 
anybody ever seen an atom? No! not even with 
the most powerful microscope. More than that, can 
an)Hbody form a conception of an atom ? It is said that 
an atom is the smallest possible particle of matter, so 
small and so constituted that it cannot be made any 
smaller. Can you form any idea of a particle of mat- 
ter so small and so constructed that it cannot be halved 
and quartered and still further subdivided? No, you 
cannot. It is beyond human conception. The atomic 
theory of matter is simply an hypothesis. Probably 
it is the true explanation of matter; at least, it is the 
best working hypothesis that has yet been devised, 
and will probably be generally accepted as long as it 
helps to explain more phenomena than any other 
theory. Yet it must be remembered that only re- 
cently there have risen certain scientific gentlemen of 
learning and sincerity who have questioned the atomic 
and molecular theory of matter. 

Now, if we cannot comprehend the ultimate nature 
of so common a thing as the material substance around 
us, of which our bodies are composed, why should 
we reject a spiritual experience, because, forsooth, we 
cannot understand what spirit is? 

Look at the fine imagery with which our Lord illus- 
trated the new birth to His skeptical hearer, Nicode- 
mus. He said: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, 
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 



the new birth: why necessary? 149 

whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every 
one that is born of the Spirit." What a profound 
and suggestive simile! Who can understand ulti- 
mately what the wind is, the reason and process of its 
peculiar phenomena? No one, not even the most 
learned meteorologist. Of course, according to the 
popular idea, it is composed of atoms and molecules. 
But what are they? No one knows. Nor is that all. 
How can atoms and molecules, which must be solid 
substances, move about so buoyantly, so facilely, so 
rhythmically pliant to the lightest touch and influ- 
ence? How can these things be? Does anybody un- 
derstand it? Nobody does. How can atoms and 
molecules be so combined and related as to make a 
gaseous or a liquid substance? No one can explain it. 
No one knows why wind blows, or water flows, or 
light shines, or heat warms. Oh! we are simply en- 
veloped in mysteries in the natural world. We need 
not go outside of that realm to find insoluble prob- 
lems. 

The scientists have analyzed the atmosphere chemi- 
cally, and inform us that it is composed of three ele- 
ments — about one-fifth oxygen, four-fifths nitrogen, 
and four one-hundredths per cent, of carbon dioxide. 
But what are oxygen and nitrogen and carbon diox- 
ide ? Has anybody ever seen them or analyzed them ? 
No one has. They are scientific terms to cover our 
ignorance. We know something about their pheno- " 
mena, just as we know something about the phenomena 
of spiritual entities, but of their real substance we know 
absolutely nothing. It is almost as if God had drawn 
a veil over the nature of elemental substance, and had 
said, "Thus far and no farther !" 

Now, let us come to the application of the parable. 
We do not refuse to breathe the atmosphere because 
we cannot understand it; nor to drink water because 
we do not understand it ; nor to eat bread because we 



150 THE RATIONAL TEST 

do not understand all about the processes of fer- 
mentation and baking; nor to ride on the trolley car 
because we do not know whether electricity is a sub- 
stance or merely a force ; nor to think because we can- 
not grasp the connection between nerve impression and 
mental perception. No! we are not so dull as that! 
Then why should we decline to accept spiritual reali- 
ties because we cannot comprehend them in the ulti- 
mate analysis? We need not understand the air; 
we need only to breathe it. We need not under- 
stand the water ; we need only to drink. So we need 
not understand the new birth; we need only to ex- 
perience it! 

Those who have experienced it do not profess to 
understand it, for intellectually they are no wiser 
than their friends who have not been born again. 
Our only claim is that they have had the experience, 
and therefore "know whereof they speak." Having 
''tasted and seen (experienced) that the Lord is 
good," they simply cannot disclaim something that 
has been so happily impinged upon their conscious- 
ness. Do not marvel, therefore, because our Re- 
deemer said unto you: "Ye must be born again. 
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest 
the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh 
and whither it goeth ; so is everyone that is born of 
the Spirit." This is not exhortation ; it is logic. 

Another thought on the heavenly birth seems to be 
worthy of presentation at this point. It is this: 
There are diversities of operation, but the same Spirit. 
We mean by this statement that, while all persons must 
be born again, the experience of the new birth does 
not come to all in the same way. All must be con- 
verted, but the details are not all alike. This is also 
a natural law in the spiritual world, for in nature 
there is continual diversity, yet it is always the same 
nature, the same principle, giving unity to all the in- 
finite variety. 



THE NEW BIRTH: WHY NECESSARY? 151 

To illumine our thought let us dwell upon the 
beautiful analogy of our great Teacher when He com- 
pared the spiritual birth to the wind. The wind does 
not always blow the same. Sometimes it blows a gale, 
a cyclone, a tornado, that sweeps across hill and 
plain like a besom of devastation. Have you ever 
experienced such a storm either on sea or land? Well, 
it causes some sudden and violent transformations, 
does it not? 

Do you not believe that there are such experiences in 
the spiritual realm — sudden, transforming, revolution- 
ary? No doubt there are. And those of us who believe 
more strongly in the quieter and soberer methods of 
conversion ought not, after all, to question the gen- 
uineness of regenerations that come through a spiritual 
tempest. There is pretty strong Scriptural warrant 
for the sudden and revolutionary species of conver- 
sion. There was the apostle Paul. As he was travel- 
ing with his comrades to Damascus, he was carry- 
ing letters of authority for the arrest of the disciples 
of Christ, against whom he was breathing out threat- 
enings and was exceedingly angry. Suddenly a light 
shone round about him, and he fell to the earth, and an 
accusing voice came from the sky. Listen to the first 
word of the bitter persecutor : "Lord, what wilt Thou 
have me to do?" Pretty sudden, was it not? Rather 
cyclonic! Then blinded, he went to Damascus, and 
three days later, when Ananias came to him and 
baptized him, the scales fell from his eyes, and he 
saw. In a few days the proud Pharisee had become a 
humble disciple of the Nazarene. Rather sudden and 
revolutionary! Rather evident that a spiritual tor- 
nado had struck him! Do you doubt the genuineness 
of Paul's conversion? He had no trouble in saying 
"just when and where he was converted." 

So to-day there are thousands upon thousands of 
Christians who have had, in their degree, a like ex- 



152 THE RATIONAL TEST 

perience. In a season of religious awakening their 
consciences were aroused, they went to God in prayer, 
and the divine breath was blown with some sudden- 
ness upon them. They know the "place and the 
hour" of their conversion. And there are people 
who never would have been converted if they had not 
been thus suddenly and impressively arrested in their 
sinful course. We have no right to call in question 
the sincerity of their motives or the reality of their 
conversion, provided they bring forth in their lives 
afterwards ''the peaceable fruits of righteousness." 
Even Pentecost was rather cyclonic in its coming, for 
the sacred record says: "And suddenly there came 
from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty 
wind, and it filled all the house where they were 
sitting." 

That is one phase of the diversity of the Spirit's 
operation. However, there are other phases. The 
wind does not always blow a gale or a cyclone. No 
doubt you are rather glad of it, too — rather glad that 
cyclones are of comparatively rare occurrence. As a 
rule, the wind comes in a light breeze or a gentle 
zephyr. Do you deny the reality of the breeze be- 
cause it is not a tempest? Of a truth, is not your 
consciousness of a breeze just as clear as your con- 
sciousness of a tempest and at the same time more 
desirable and less perilous? Is it not the general and 
the normal method of the wind's action, while the 
storm is exceptional and extraordinary? 

Do you not believe that thousands of true Chris- 
tians have been converted by a spiritual zephyr? The 
Spirit of God blew gently into their hearts, assuring 
them of His pardon and love. No doubt there are 
many people who came into this experience when they 
were so young that they cannot remember the time 
of its advent. They know that they love Christ, that 
He saves them by His grace, that the divine Spirit 



the new birth: why necessary? 153 

bears witness with their spirits that they are the chil- 
dren of God; but they cannot tell just when and where 
this heavenly experience began. Perhaps it was at 
their mother's knee when she taught them to lisp their 
evening prayer and told them that Jesus was their 
Friend and Saviour. Then they gave Him their 
hearts, and He imparted His grace to them, and they 
never lost the precious gift. Why not? Have not 
many of our most valuable human experiences come 
into our lives in that quiet, unobtrusive, undemonstra- 
tive way ? It is not necessary to remember when and 
where you were saved, in order to be saved. Thou- 
sands of breezes have fanned your cheeks, but you 
cannot remember them all; cannot remember the first 
one. Of course, if you have ever been struck by a cy- 
clone, you will be likely to remember the "time and 
place" distinctly. But such an experience is not nec- 
essary to a good and wholesome physical and psy- 
chical life. Neither is a cyclonic conversion essential 
to a true spiritual life. 

Someone may put this question: "Is it possible 
for a person to know his heavenly Father, and yet not 
remember the first time he met Him ?" Yes, that surely 
is possible. How many people remember the first time 
they met their earthly fathers ? Yet they are conscious 
of the acquaintance, and just as keenly so as if they 
could remember the first meeting. 

Awhile ago we cited Paul's experience as an ex- 
ample of the cyclonic and revolutionary kind of con- 
version. But not all Biblical experiences were Paul- 
ine. Paul is the broad-minded apostle who told us 
about the "diversities of operations, but the same 
Spirit." There was Timothy. Did he experience 
a cyclone in his conversion? Nay; the apostle Paul 
himself writes to Timothy: "But abide thou in the 
things which thou hast learned and hast been assured 
of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and 



154 TH £ RATIONAL TEST 

that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings 
which are able to make thee wise unto salvation 
through faith which is in Christ Jesus." (American 
Revised Version.) A zephyr-like conversion! To- 
day there are many Timothean as well as many Paul- 
ine conversions. 

And we are wondering whether the zephyr-like 
conversions are not, after all, the normal course of 
spiritual experiences, while the cyclonic ones are what 
might be called "necessary evils." Paul was a wicked 
unbeliever and persecutor, and on that account he had 
to be struck hard and suddenly. It is when people 
grow up in sin and stray far from God, that they 
must be arrested by something extraordinary, to bring 
them to their knees and rivet conviction on their con- 
sciences. Would not this rather be the normal course ? 
To baptize the children in their infancy, implanting 
in their hearts the seeds or potencies of the regenerate 
life ; then nurture them in such a way in the home and 
in the church, that at the earliest period of conscious- 
ness they would learn about Christ, and give their 
hearts to him, and accept His love; then by prayer 
and teaching nurture the grace implanted until it 
grows up into a ripe and fruitful Christian character. 
Surely that would be better than to allow them to grow 
up in sin and disobedience and then expect a great 
wave of revival to come along and sweep them into 
the kingdom. Surely it is not right to make the re- 
vival a substitute for careful and painstaking parental 
and pastoral training. 

Let it be remembered that this view does not mean 
that all persons must not be "born again." Christ 
said, "Ye must be born again," and, "Except one be 
born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God." But 
who will say that infants cannot be regenerated in bap- 
tism, and then come into the experience of conver- 
sion at the very dawn of consciousness? 



THE NEW BIRTH: WHY NECESSARY? 1 55 

Here an incident comes to mind. A good many 
years ago a series of special meetings was going on in a 
town in one of our Middle States. Many persons 
were coming to Christ. The interest grew so intense 
that meetings for the interchange of Christian fel- 
lowship were held in the forenoon, while the larger 
meetings for the unconverted were held in the even- 
ing. At the day meetings some thrilling experiences 
were related. One after another of the converts rose 
and told how and when the experience had come. 
One had been converted out in the field as he knelt 
upon the snow; another in the barn as he knelt upon 
the fodder; a woman had suddenly felt her burden 
too great to bear, and had dropped on her knees by 
her bedside and had lifted her heart to God in prayer, 
and presently the blessing came. Thus the chorus 
rang, and tears of joy flowed down almost every 
cheek. 

By and by a saintly old mother in Israel arose. 
Everybody who knew her had confidence in her piety. 
She had lived the kind of a life that carries its own 
evidence on the face of it. She had reared a large 
family, and all of them had come into the church, 
and her grandchildren were now coming. Her testi- 
mony that day was in substance as follows: "My 
brethren and sisters, it has made my heart beat joy- 
fully to hear your testimonies ; to hear how God came 
and spoke the word of peace to your souls. I have 
been especially happy to listen to the experiences of 
those who have just given themselves to Christ and 
His service. I am glad that the witness in their 
hearts is so clear and joyful. However, in one re- 
spect my experience has not been precisely like that 
of some of you who have spoken. I cannot tell just 
the time and place of my conversion ; for" — and then 
her face shone with a radiance that was heavenly — 
"for I cannot remember the time when I did not love 



156 THE RATIONAL TEST 

Jesus!" It was enough. Everyone in the congre- 
gation believed her. They would no more have 
thought of doubting her conversion than their own, 
even if the experience did not come in quite the same 
way. Diversities of operation, but the same Spirit ! 

Perhaps someone asks how the celestial birth is 
to be secured. Suppose we feel that the breath of 
God has never come into our hearts. Go back to 
Christ's own imagery — that of the wind. If you 
were in a close room, with insufficient air, and you 
felt that you were suffocating, what would you do if 
you had the power? You surely would hasten to the 
window, fling it open, thrust your head out into the 
pure air of heaven, and breathe in the life-giving ozone. 

A picture that of the method of obtaining the regen- 
erating grace of God. You must go to the heavenly 
atmosphere, to Him who will breathe it upon you. 
Who dispenses the Spirit? You remember the words 
of John the Baptist, who declared: "I indeed bap- 
tize you with water; but He that cometh after me 
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." 
That is all the instruction that the inquiring soul 
needs — go to Jesus Christ in earnest prayer, firmly 
believing, and He will breathe into your heart the 
breath of life. The impartation of spiritual life is the 
birth from above. 



X 
Christ's resurrection : its ultimate purpose 

Many persons seem to have vague ideas of the real 
purpose of the resurrection of Christ's body. For in- 
stance, it is often alleged that we need a living Sav- 
iour; that a dead Saviour would be no Redeemer at 
all; therefore Christ rose from the dead. But even 
without the resuscitation of Christ's corporeal nature 
we should have had a living Lord, for His spirit, 
which never could have perished, would still have as- 
cended to the right hand of God to make intercession 
for men. We should remember that Christ was truly 
human as well as divine, and human experience is this : 
the body returns to the dust from which it sprang, 
the spirit to God who gave it. Hence the ultimate 
purpose of Christ's resurrection could not have been 
to furnish a Saviour who was spiritually alive, but 
one who was physically alive as well. 

Our Lord's resurrection is sometimes spoken of as 
the procuring cause of the eternal blessedness con- 
ferred on the spiritual part of our nature; that is, 
because Christ rose from the dead and ascended bodily 
to heaven, therefore when we die our spirits shall 
ascend to heaven to live forever with God. We do 
not think this reasoning either Scriptural or logical. 
Why? Because in His spirit Christ suffered for the 
redemption of our spirits, and therefore, had His 
body remained in the sepulchre, He would still have 
made atonement for our spirits ; and by virtue of His 
spirit's ascension to heaven, our spirits, too, would 
have cleaved the sky and found their way to God's 



158 THE RATIONAL TEST 

right hand. Had God's plan of redemption included 
only the saving of men's souls there would have been 
no need of the revivification of Christ's body. 

Sometimes the resurrection of Christ is spiritual- 
ized. It is said to be typical of man's regeneration — of 
His rising from spiritual death into spiritual life. And 
we have even heard it applied to man's progressive 
sanctification, the similitude being that as Christ rose 
from the dead physically, so we should rise every day 
from a lower to a higher plane of spiritual grace, 
making every day an Easter day in religious advance- 
ment. This is proper and beautiful as an illustration, 
and has Scriptural warrant, too, for the apostle Paul 
makes similar use of it in the sixth chapter of Ro- 
mans: "Like as Christ was raised up from the dead 
by the glory of the Father, even so we also should 
walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted 
together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also 
in the likeness of His resurrection; knowing this, 
that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body 
of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should 
not serve sin. . . . For in that He died, He died 
unto sin once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto 
God. Likewise reckon ye yourselves to be dead in- 
deed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus 
Christ our Lord." 

While this is indeed a beautiful and impressive 
figure, it should be remembered that it is only a 
figure, an analogy. The apostle is well aware of this, 
for he says that "we have been planted together in 
the likeness of His death." He does not mean, there- 
fore, to argue that the resurrection of Jesus is the pro- 
curing cause of man's spiritual life and sanctification. 

No doubt one of the purposes of our Lord's resur- 
rection — and a very important one — was to furnish 
conclusive evidence to His disciples of His messiah- 
ship and divinity. A more convincing miracle could 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION : ULTIMATE PURPOSE 1 59 

not have been performed than that of our Lord's res- 
urrection by His own power. Assured that it really 
had occurred, the apostles could not for a moment 
doubt that Jesus was all that He had professed, to be 
before His death. And this miracle had its intended 
effect on the hearts of the first disciples, who received 
through it such an access of faith that their last doubts 
seem to have been overcome. Even skeptical Thomas 
became a believer. Ever afterwards the apostles ap- 
pealed to the resurrection as the climacteric proof of 
the Lordship of. Christ. 

Yet we cannot believe that the ultimate design of 
Christ's resurrection was its evidential value. That 
was only its temporary purpose. Had it not been an 
essential factor in the sublime scheme of redemption, 
the miracle of the resurrection would hardly have been 
performed merely to convince our Lord's followers of 
His divine claims, for some other miracle just as con- 
vincing might have been performed. It might be said 
that the evidential value of the resurrection was God's 
temporary and collateral purpose. 

What was the real and ultimate meaning of that first 
Easter morning — its essential purpose in the scheme 
of redeeming love ? Our reply is this : The resur- 
rection of Christ's body was and is the procuring cause 
of the redemption of our bodies and the restitution of 
the fallen world of nature. And this proposition we 
shall proceed to establish. 

Had Christ not risen from the dead, our spirits 
might still have been redeemed through the vicarious 
sufferings of His spiritual nature and its restoration 
to the heavenly realm; but in that case man's body 
would never have been raised from the tomb; man 
would not have been "all immortal." His corporeal 
organism would have had no eternal destiny. Satan, 
who brought bodily death as well as spiritual wreck- 
age into the world, would have gained that much of 



160 THE RATIONAL TEST 

a victory, at least — the eternal separation of the hu- 
man soul and body and the eternal dissolution of the 
latter. 

Now when we regard the whole teaching of the 
Sacred Scriptures, we see that God had an eternal, 
and not merely a temporary, purpose in making man 
a dual being, physical as well as spiritual. Let us 
go back to the creation. In the first place, God made 
a physical universe — and it was a universe of real ma- 
terial substance, not a mere chimera. After it was 
finished, including the furnishing of the world, there 
was no intelligent being who was so constituted that he 
could have an organic relation to the physical realm. 
The angels, who had doubtless been previously created, 
were purely spiritual intelligences. Therefore God 
resolved to make a rational being with an organ that 
would connect him vitally with the material world. 

You know the beautiful story, which is just as 
philosophical as it is beautiful — how God formed 
man's body out of the dust of the ground; then 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul. He was a new and unique per- 
sonality, a dual being, not mere body, not mere spirit, 
but both united in one person. The spirit was so con- 
stituted that it would have been imperfect without the 
body; the body so made that it would have been use- 
less without the rational soul. Now, if God in so 
wonderful and supernal a way, created this new dual 
personality, is it not reasonable to believe that He in- 
tended him for eternal destiny in the very life with 
which he was originally endowed ? Did He make this 
wonderful, complex organism called the human body 
only for a temporary purpose? We cannot^ think it. 
To our mind it is far more rational, and Scriptural, 
too, to believe that God intended the physical universe 
• for an eternal purpose, and gave man an organ 
through which he might hold vital commerce with it 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION : ULTIMATE PURPOSE l6l 

forever and ever. What a destiny this view opens up 
for man! With his spiritual faculty he may hold 
communion with God and angels and saints; with his 
physical organism he may hold no less living fellow- 
ship with the wonderful material universe that God 
has made for his habitation and delight. 

The argument for this doctrine becomes cumula- 
tive. God's plan for the eternal redemption of the 
human body furnishes a powerful reason in the very 
nature of things for the incarnation of the Son of 
God. Had God intended to redeem only the soul of 
man, there would have been no vital reason for the 
Word to become flesh. It might have been wise and 
good, to reveal God's love for man and His sympathy 
for him in his distress, but that would not have been 
a reason per se — in the very constitution of things. 
He might have displayed His love and sympathy in 
some other way, for the resources of the Omniscient 
One are not limited, save by the nature of His own 
being and life. 

If only the spirit of man was to be redeemed, 
Christ might have manifested Himself only in a spirit- 
ual way and offered only a spiritual sacrifice. For 
Him to become flesh, endure physical suffering, and 
rise from the dead would all have been a work of su- 
pererogation. It would have served no vital purpose 
in the redemptive scheme. 

Take the wider view, however — that Christ came to 
destroy all the works of the devil, to restore man in his 
entirety to his original estate — and the incarnation has 
a sufficient basis. By his sin in the garden of Eden 
man had fallen. His sin was both spiritual and physi- 
cal, and therefore brought upon him both spiritual and 
physical death. In neither part of his dual being 
could he do God's will or lift himself up into perfect 
communion with God. The gulf between the human 
and the divine must be bridged somehow, if man is to 
ii 



l62 THE RATIONAL TEST 

be recovered. But no bridge could be thrown across 
from the human side, on account of man's sin and in- 
ability. So the chasm must be bridged, if bridged at 
all, from the divine side. That was done by God in 
the person of His Son coming to earth and taking 
upon Himself human nature in both parts, physical 
and spiritual. Thus the connection between the di- 
vine and the human was re-established in a perfect 
and real and organic way; and now, when men by 
faith attach themselves to the divine-human Saviour, 
they are brought back to God in the entirety of their 
personality. 

However, Christ as man, both spiritual and physi- 
cal, must live a perfect life in the world, so as to work 
out a perfect human righteousness for us; then He 
must suffer in His flesh and soul on the cross to make 
substitutional atonement for all our sins, whether 
of the soul or the body; then He must rise physically 
from the dead, ascend corporeally as well as spiritually 
to the right hand of God, and be glorified in His whole 
theanthropic person, in order that He may come in 
His own good time into vital contact with the bodies 
of the dead and raise them to immortal life, so that 
they "may be fashioned like unto His own glorious 
body, according to the working whereby He is able 
even to subdue all things unto Himself." 

It is because Christ lives in His glorified body, and 
only for that reason, that we have hope of the resur- 
rection of our bodies. And the relation between His 
glorified body and our glorified bodies will be vital and 
organic, not merely mechanical. As He shall bring 
our redeemed spirits to Himself by actual contact, so 
also by actual contact He shall revitalize our physical 
nature and bring our resurrected and glorified bodies 
to Himself. "Because I live, ye shall live also." 

In many places the Holy Scriptures impress this 
vital relation between Christ's resurrection and man's. 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION : ULTIMATE PURPOSE 1 63 

Look at Christ's pregnant words (John vi. 54) : 
"Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood 
hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the 
last day." What can that mean save that the life of 
our Lord's glorified body shall revive our bodies on 
the morning of the resurrection ? Note Paul's teach- 
ing in 1 Cor. xv : "Now if Christ be preached that He 
rose from the dead, how say some among you that 
there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there 
be no resurrection of the dead, then' is Christ not 
risen. . . . For if the dead rise not, then is Christ 
not raised." Do you not see how intimately the res- 
urrection of the saints is related to that of our Lord? 
n The apostle's argument is that if the saints are not to be 
raised, the resurrection of Christ would have been 
purposeless. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, 
and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For 
since by man came death, by man came also the resur- 
rection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so 
in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in 
his own order : Christ the first-fruits ; afterwards they 
that are Christ* s at His coming." 

We have now shown with sufficient clearness and 
fullness,, we trust, that the resurrection and glorifica- 
tion of Christ's body was the effective cause of the 
final resurrection of the saints. It shall be our fur- 
ther purpose to show that the resurrection of our 
Lord and Saviour has a still wider scope and design 
in the sublime scheme of redeeming grace. If man is 
destined to have a glorified body throughout eternity, 
it must be because such an organ is to have a vital 
relation to something akin to it in God's far-reaching 
plan. 

What is that something? If man were simply to 
have eternal fellowship with purely spiritual beings, 
he would need no physical organism, and therefore 
the resurrection of Christ would have been a work of 



1 64 THE RATIONAL TEST 

superfluity. What was the original use of man's 
body? Surely to put him into organic connection 
with the physical nature which God had made. It was 
a real world of nature; therefore man had to have a 
real body. We see that he possesses such a body now, 
and that with it he comes into real and living contact 
with the physical realm ; and we have not the slightest 
reason to believe that his fellowship with nature was 
any less real before he fell into sin; indeed, there is 
good reason to believe that it was far more perfect 
then than it is now. 

Now, since God insists that man shall have a body 
after the judgment, it must be because He has fore- 
ordained an eternal destiny for the material universe 
as the dwelling place of man — if not for his dwelling 
place, at least for his delight. In providing man a 
glorified body, God surely is furnishing him an or- 
gan with which to enjoy such a universe in the most 
vital way and to the fullest extent. If this is not a 
part of God's great plan, it is difficult to understand 
why man should have a resurrection. Why not make 
him a being of pure spirit like the angels ? Ah ! but man 
was not created an angel in the first place; he was 
created a dual being, and, unless God should change 
his personality, he never could attain to the highest 
possibilities of his being without the recovery of his 
pristine estate — a perfect soul organically connected 
with a perfect body. If God wanted only angelic 
beings throughout eternity, why did He make human 
beings at all? Why did He not simply make more 
angels ? No ! it is evident that God wants such beings 
in the universe as men. 

However, the realm of nature — at least, so far as 
this earth is concerned — is at present not well fitted 
for the happy and blessed habitation of man. Obvi- 
ously something has occurred to disarrange the nat- 
ural cosmos. There are earthquakes, volcanic erup- 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION I ULTIMATE PURPOSE 1 65 

tions, floods, tornadoes, diseases of many kinds, ex- 
tremes of heat and cold, poisonous plants and insects, 
and destructive animals. Man still has through his 
body vital connection with nature, but alas! it often 
brings him suffering and death instead of joy and life. 
With one hand nature puts the draught of cold water 
to his parching lips; with the other she sometimes 
consumes him with a thirst that she refuses to quench. 
Sometimes she gormandizes him with food; again she 
starves him. Sooner or later she brings death to all . 
her children, by accident or disease or old age. A 
world like this would not be a fit domicile for an im- 
mortal being, whether he possessed a natural or a glori- 
fied body. 

At some time and in some way nature must have suf- 
fered a lapse. The world is surely far from being an 
Eden to-day. The Biblical description of the original 
garden cannot be made to agree with any spot yet found 
on the earth since the fall and expulsion of our first 
parents. What has happened? The explanation is 
at least hinted at in God's Word. Nature was made 
for man ; but when man, its head and crown, fell into 
sin, the world that was made for his residence must 
have suffered a lapse, too — must have become partly 
disorganized. There are very clear hints of this 
fact in the Bible. The serpent, which originally was 
the acutest of the lower animals, though innocent of 
evil, was then condemned to be a crawling, clammy, 
noisome reptile, hated and feared of man and beast 
alike. In the light of this discussion let us read over 
again God's anathema upon nature after He had 
driven our sinning progenitor out of the garden: 
"Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt 
thou eat of it all the days of thy life ; thorns also and 
thistles shall it bring forth to thee ; and thou shalt eat 
the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for 



1 66 THE RATIONAL TEST 

out of it wast thou taken : for dust thou art, and unto 
dust shalt thou return. ,, Speculate about it as you will, 
if that passage does not explain the evils we find in 
nature, there is no explanation for them. 

Is it not evident, therefore, that nature must also 
be redeemed? Surely, surely, if man and nature are 
ever to be restored to their primitive happy and per- 
fect communion. We believe that God's remedial 
plan through the incarnation, death and resurrection 
of Jesus Christ includes the restoration of nature to 
her first estate. When the Son of God took upon 
Him the form of a servant, He also took upon Him 
the nature of the physical world. He bore that nature 
with Him to God's right hand, where it was glorified 
and endued with divine grace and power; and in His 
own good time He will bring it into contact with lapsed 
nature, which shall then be restored and glorified, con- 
verted into a blessed habitation of the saints, who 
have been redeemed by the same Almighty Saviour. 

Now, let us see whether this is not the clear teach- 
ing of Holy Writ. First read Isa. xi. 6-9 (American 
Revised Version), which is clearly a Messianic proph- 
ecy: "And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and 
the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf 
and the young lion and the fatling together; and a 
little child shall lead them. And the cow and the 
bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down to- 
gether; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And 
the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and 
the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. 
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy moun- 
tain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of 
Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea." Surely this is 
a promise of the happy time coming when there shall 
be nothing hurtful in all the realm of nature. 1 John 
iii. 8: "For this purpose the Son of God was mani- 
fested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION : ULTIMATE PURPOSE 1 67 

Sin and death and nature's lapse were all the works 
of the devil, and so Christ's victory over His adver- 
sary would not be complete if He did not raise man's 
body from the grave and restore nature to her primal 
estate. 

Now, let us carefully read Romans viii. 18-23, ac- 
cording to the American Revised Version: "For I 
reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not 
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be 
revealed to us-ward. For the earnest expectation of 
the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of 
God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of 
its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it, 
in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the 
glory of the children of God. For we know that the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until 
now. And not only so, but ourselves also, who have 
the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, 
the redemption of our body." Never was there a pro- 
founder philosophical statement made than that. It 
proves that God's design for the creation is not de- 
struction, but deliverance from its bondage into the 
same liberty as that of the children of God. And 
note, too, that the creation and man are groaning and 
waiting for practically the same thing — the creation 
for restoration, man for resurrection. So when the 
glorified body and the restored creation shall be 
brought together, the year of jubilee, will have come. 

Our next passage is 2 Pet. iii. 12, 13: "'Looking for 
and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, 
by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be 
dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent 
heat. But, according to His promise, we look for new 
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness." God's refining fire, therefore, shall not destroy 



1 68 THE RATION AI, TEST 

His creation, but shall simply dissolve and burn out 
the dross. 

In this connection we may read Rev. xxi. 1-3 : "And 
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first 
heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the 
sea is no more. And I saw the Holy City, New Jeru- 
salem, coming down out of heaven from God, made 
ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I 
heard a great voice out of the throne, saying, Behold, 
the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell 
with them, and they shall be His people, and God 
Himself shall be with them, and be their God." Also 
verse 10: "And He carried me away in the Spirit to 
a mountain, great and high, and showed me the Holy 
City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from 
God." 

Thus the Scriptures teach that the earth is to be re- 
juvenated, and is to be the tabernacle of man — per- 
haps one, at least, of the many mansions of our 
Father's house. That the earth in its glorified state 
would be well adapted for man's residence and delight 
may be readily believed, in view of the many hints na- 
ture gives us even at present of her possibilities. 
Through what we are wont to call natural processes 
some things in nature sometimes become in a measure 
glorified. You take a homely root-bulb. It has no at- 
tractiveness about it whatever. Plant it in a black, 
mucky soil in which there is no more beauty. But 
now let the sunlight shine upon it, the rain refresh it, 
the soft breezes caress it, and see what it has become 
— a variegated flower, "a thing of beauty and a joy 
forever." Yet in its composition it is the same as the 
homely root and the black soil from which it grew. 
It has simply become glorified. If nature can do that 
according to the laws of her own being, what cannot 
God make of her when He touches her with divine, 
glorifying power? 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION : UI/flMATE PURPOSE 1 69 

One more thought, and a comforting one. Some- 
times, in view of the immensity of the universe, we are 
almost overwhelmed with the sense of our own insig- 
nificance. The Psalmist felt the same littleness when 
he exclaimed: "When I consider thy heavens, the 
work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which 
Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou are mindful 
of him? and the son of man that Thou visitest him?" 
So we are apt to think that God does not care for such 
puny, insignificant creatures as we. He is concerned 
with the immensities. Why did God create a practi- 
cally infinite universe, and yet, so far as we know, 
people only one little globe of it all? Would He have 
sent His only begotten Son to die for mere "worms 
of the dust" ? 

Such thoughts might well daunt us unless we have 
larger views of God's plans for the rational beings He 
has made and redeemed. Suppose God made man 
immortal, both in body and in spirit, will not man need 
an infinite universe in which to enjoy an eternity of 
love and research? Nay, the universe will be none 
too large for immortal man. To say nothing of the 
spiritual universe, which is infinite, too, we feel that it 
was worth while for God to send His Son into the 
world to become incarnate, to die on the cross, to rise 
again from the dead, to be received into the heavens 
until the time of the restitution of all things, in order 
to rescue and redeem such a being as immortal man 
and place him in the midst of an infinite physical realm 
to learn every moment of eternity more and more 
about the love and power and glory of the God who 
purchased him with the precious blood of His own 
Son. 

A few words relative to the nature of the glorified 
body seem to be needed to complete our statement of 
the ultimate purpose of the incarnation and resurrec- 
tion of our Lord. A study of Christ's resurrected 



170 THE RATIONAL TEST 

body will throw much light on this subject, which has 
puzzled so many people. There was a marked differ- 
ence between His body before and after that Easter 
morning. After that event He appeared and disap- 
peared suddenly. Though the disciples twice shut 
themselves in a closed room, He suddenly appeared in 
the midst of the company. Either He was there in in- 
visible form all the time, or else He entered through 
the wall or the closed door. In either case His body 
was more like spirit than the material substance with 
which we are acquainted. At the time of His ascen- 
sion He rose from the mount of Olivet into the air 
contrary to all the known laws of gravitation. Now, 
remember that it is said by the inspired penman that 
our bodies shall be "fashioned like unto His own 
glorious body." 

The apostle Paul's sublime chapter on the resurrec- 
tion (the fifteenth of First Corinthians) gives some 
hints as to the nature of the resurrected body: "It 
is sown in corruption ; it is raised in incorruption ; it is 
sown in dishonor; it is raised in honor; it is sown in 
weakness; it is raised in power; it is sown a natural 
body; it is raised a spiritual body." Also: u As we 
have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear 
the image of the heavenly." With all his dialectical 
force and acumen he argues for a physical resurrec- 
tion, and yet so high is his conception of a glorified 
body that he adds in the fiftieth verse: "Now this I 
say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incor- 
ruption." Then he adds : "Behold I show you a 
mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be 
changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
at the last trump ; for the trumpet shall sound, and the 
dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be 
changed. For this corruptible must put on incorrup- 
tion, and this mortal must put on immortality." All 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION : ULTIMATE PURPOSE 171 

of which must mean that the change from the natural 
body to the resurrected body is so complete and won- 
derful as to amount to a transfiguration; it shall not 
be like the gross "flesh and blood" which we know, 
and which would be only a clog to the progress of the 
spirit, but shall be beautiful and incorrupt and ethereal, 
the perfect organ of the purified and redeemed soul, 
yielding to every decision of the holy will, and yet at 
the same time making a perfect instrument for holding 
commerce with the glorified material universe. 

Yet it must not be supposed that the resurrected body 
will not be the same as the pre-resurrection body so 
far as regards substance. Some persons, in speaking 
of a spiritual body, seem to mean that the material 
body is entirely dispensed with and permitted to molder 
forever in the dust, while in some way the saints re- 
ceive a body that is composed of spiritual substance. 
There is no warrant for such a belief in the Scriptures. 
Job says, "In my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall 
see for myself and not another." Nor is the idea of 
a body composed of spiritual substance in accordance 
with reason. Why should a spirit need a spiritual 
body? The spirit is its own body and its own sub- 
stance. A body composed of the same substance 
would be no body at all. You might as well talk about 
a material body clothing itself with another material 
body. If the spirit is to have any body at all, it must 
be incarnated in a body composed of different sub- 
stance. And there are only two kinds of substance, 
the material and the spiritual. Therefore our resur- 
rected bodies shall be the same or similar in essence 
to the bodies we now have — that is, material substance 
refined, purified, transmuted, in short, glorified, com- 
pletely subject to the sanctified spirits with which they 
shall be united. This prospective transfiguration of 
the human body ought to impose no difficulty on either 
faith or reason, for by what we call purely natural 



172 THE RATIONAL TEST 

processes all material substances can be changed from 
the coarse and heavy into the volatile or the ethereal; 
the homely iron ore into a molten stream that glows 
with roseate hues; the rough gold ore into a river of 
shining, iridescent fire; the black soil into lovely 
flowers of sweetest fragrance; noxious insects and 
weed-seeds into bright-hued birds; and all substance 
can be converted into the liquid and the gaseous forms. 
Everywhere nature gives us hints of the possibility of 
material glorification. 

An objection that is often raised is this: How can 
the identical body be resurrected when the material of 
which it is composed is often scattered widely over the 
earth and enters into the composition of various plants 
and animals? It is thought that the resurrection of 
the identical body under such circumstances would be 
utterly impossibly. To say that it would be impossible 
would be to limit the power and wisdom of the in- 
finite God, who, in the first place, had to create every 
individual atom of matter, and, in the second place, 
has had to preserve it every moment ever since its 
creation. If He can do that — and He surely can, for 
He has — He can also raise from the dead at the last 
day the identical body of each person, if such a miracle 
is necessary. We should be careful how we try to 
limit the omnipotence of God. 

But it is not necessary to suppose that God will 
bring together all the particles of matter that originally 
composed each human physical organism. Even in 
our brief temporal life on earth He does not insist on 
the identity of the particles year after year, but has 
so ordained that our bodies are changing all the time. 
The body of the adult may not have a single particle 
of material in its composition to-day that it had in 
childhood. Yet neither the body nor the soul has lost 
its identity. The man is still the same personality he 
was in his boyhood. There is something perduring 



CHRIST'S RESURRECTION : ULTIMATE PURPOSE 1 73 

about the human personality notwithstanding all the 
changes that the years bring to the body and the out- 
ward conditions. So at the last day, after God's re- 
fining fire has gone through the realm of nature and 
has purified and glorified it, God can raise up from it 
such a body for each soul as shall please Him. Re- 
member it is the soul that perdures without change of 
substance, not the body. The Apostle Paul makes this 
matter clear (1 Cor. xv. 35-38, American Revision): 
"But someone will say, How are the dead raised? and 
with what manner of body do they come? Thou 
foolish one, that which thou thyself sowest is not 
quickened except it die; and that which thou sowest, 
thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a bare grain, 
it may chance of wheat or some other kind; but God 
giveth it a body even as it pleased Him, and to each 
seed a body of its own." It would appear "as if Paul 
had here anticipated the objections of the skeptic, as 
well as some of the recent discoveries of science. 

A last question remains for elucidation: Why did 
not Christ abolish death at once? The apostle says 
that the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, 
thereby implying that death is not yet annulled, though 
it is robbed of its terrors for the believer. All must 
die eventually, saints and sinners alike. If Christ died 
in our stead and rose again to give us physical immor- 
tality, why must our bodies perish and lie in the grave 
for centuries awaiting the resurrection? Why is there 
not an immediate resurrection, or one on the third 
day? There must be some reason in the nature of 
things for this regime. We simply offer a suggestion, 
which may prove helpful, but we do not profess to 
speak with anything like dogmatism. 

During this earthly life we are wedded to the flesh 
and the world. How much time, money and attention 
we bestow upon our bodies and in pursuit of purely 
worldly employments ! How little time we give to our 



174 THE RATIONAL TEST 

souls and to purely spiritual pursuits ! We are of the 
earth, earthy. The world absorbs us, and religion is 
only a side- issue. To a lamentable extent our bodies 
are our masters — our bodies and the world. The sin 
of our first parents was simply this, that they choose 
the world rather than God, the earthly rather than 
the spiritual, and that worldy proclivity has been en- 
tailed on all their posterity. 

This being so, perhaps we shall need a period of 
disembodied experience, such as God has provided for 
us in the intermediate state, when we may come into 
direct contact with purely spiritual realities, and thus 
cultivate and develop the spiritual part of our being, 
until by and by our souls shall become so potent and 
glorious that, when they are reunited with our bodies, 
they will be able to dominate them entirely, making 
them subservient to all the decisions of the sanctified 
will. In order to enjoy even the physical universe to 
the utmost, it is obvious that the soul must be the 
master, not the servant, of the body. An intermediate 
state, therefore, seems to be required in the nature of 
things to wean us from the disposition to prefer the 
world and to develop the powers of the soul. 

While this may appear like speculation, we are per- 
suaded that it is a helpful thought, and that it offers 
a rational basis for a term of disembodied existence. 
It may, however, be objected that those who remain 
at the last day and who are changed "in the twinkling 
of an eye," will miss this opportunity for spiritual cul- 
ture in the purely spiritual state of existence. In reply 
we would suggest — and it is only a suggestion — that 
perhaps they may not need such an experience, because, 
in that epoch of the world's development under the 
influence of the gospel, they may have abundant op- 
portunity for unfolding the powers of the soul, in 
order to. give it perfect dominion over the body. 



XI 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 

He who believes in the infallibility of the Scriptures 
can have no doubt of the coming of a day when all 
nations and tribes and kindred shall be summoned be- 
fore the judgment bar of God to give an account of 
the deeds done in the body. Indeed, the teaching of 
the Bible is so explicit and positive on this point that 
the only recourse the denier has is to challenge the in- 
spiration of the Word. Christ went so far as to give 
some details of the mode of procedure on that day. He 
avers that the division of the human family will then 
take place, just as the shepherd divides the sheep from 
the goats. Some shall be placed on the right hand, 
and some on the left. Then He goes on to indicate 
some of the standards by which the sentences shall be 
declared : and in concluding He says : 'These shall 
go away into everlasting punishment ; but the righteous 
into life eternal." Several of His parables, as. for 
instance, those of the pounds, the talents, and the vir- 
gins, show plainly that every servant will be called to 
account. 

The inspired apostles are no less pronounced in 
teaching this doctrine. Paul declares: "So then we 
shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ:*' 
"Every man shall give an account of himself to God :" 
"I charge thee, therefore, before God and the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead 
at His appearance and His kingdom;" "In the day 
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus 
Christ according to my gospel." Peter speaks 



176 THE RATIONAL TEST 

of the "day of judgment and perdition of ungodly 
men;" Jude of "the judgment of the great day;" 
John says that "the dead, both small and great, shall 
stand before God." 

These are all the quotations that are needed to prove 
that the idea of a general judgment at the last day is 
a Biblical doctrine. In the next place, does this doc- 
trine agree with the conclusions of right reason? We 
shall see whether the affirmative can be sustained. 

What is the purpose of the great day of the 
assize of the world so clearly prophesied in the Sacred 
Scriptures? It is to put an end to the present era; 
this era in which wrong so often prevails and right 
is so often nailed to the cross. In that day, according 
to the Word, God will put forth His supernatural and 
omnipotent strength to destroy sin and establish 
righteousness forever in His universe. 

We would ask, Is it not reasonable to expect such 
an epoch in the world's history ? Can we believe that 
the present hard and often unequal struggle between 
the forces of truth and falsehood will go on forever ? 

Suppose we should accept such a view, what a 
hopeless world this would be? Who would care to 
struggle and strive ? In that case most men would not 
feel that it was worth while to contend for the truth. 
They would feel that their contention was a forlorn 
hope. Take away from the human heart the belief 
in a great day of the ultimate triumph of right over 
wrong, and you cut the nerve of all moral striving, 
and plunge men into a slough of despond. On the 
other hand, inspire them with the firm conviction that 
a day is coming when truth and right will prevail, and 
joy and peace and purity will reign supreme forever, 
and you put heart into them; you infuse into them a 
desire to get all people, as far as possible, to align them- 
selves with the right, so that they may be on the vic- 
torious side at last and share in the joys of their Lord 
in eternal blessedness. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 1 77 

In the world as at present constituted justice is often 
unequal. The innocent frequently suffer, while the 
wicked go unpunished. Even the Psalmist said of the 
wicked : "There are no bands in their death, but their 
strength is firm." More than once he found himself 
envious of the foolish and daunted by the prosperity 
of the wicked. Who, like Hamlet, has not often been 
disheartened by "the oppressor's wrong, the proud 
man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's 
delay, the insolence of office?" Now here is the vital 
question, will injustice prevail forever ? Or will there 
come a day when God shall put all enemies under His 
feet, and when even-handed justice shall hew to the 
line of righteousness and truth? If the latter, we have 
hope; if the former, only despair. 

Some reply that the millennium will be brought 
about by the gradual evangelization of the world. 
However, that view does not seem to the writer to be 
borne out by the teaching of the Scriptures or the con- 
clusions of a logical process. When Christ depicted 
the last day, the day of general assize, He represented 
the wicked by the goats on the left hand, and appar- 
ently there were many of them. How could that be 
a true picture if all the people of the earth are to be 
converted before the judgment day? Once He asked. 
the question as if it might be answered in the negative, 
"When the Son of man shall appear, will He find faith 
on the earth?" What would be the use of a general 
judgment if all the people were enfolded in the love 
and salvation of Christ? Why should the wicked be 
represented as fleeing from the wrath of God and the 
Lamb, and calling on the hills to fall upon them? We 
are well aware that the millennium and the second 
comingof Christ are involved in some obscurity and that 
there are divers opinions on the subject; but this much 
seems to be clear from the Word of God — that the 
struggle between truth and error, right and wrong, 
12 



178 THE RATIONAL TEST 

will go on, much in the same old way, until Christ shall 
appear in judgment, and assign to wickedness and its 
devotees their proper place, separate from the good 
and pure, and then shall come the era of eternal peace 
and joy. 

At the present rate of winning men to Christ com- 
pared with the increase of the population, how long 
will it take to convert the whole world and make it 
an Eden? We confess that, while we believe that the 
world is better than it was some centuries ago, much 
better, spiritual progress has been so slow, and wicked- 
ness is still so strongly entrenched in high places and 
low, and is so defiant of all law, both human and di- 
vine, while the pall of spiritual indifferentism has be- 
come so widespread and oppressive, that we cannot 
bring ourself to believe that the earth is going to be 
imparadised by a gradual process. 

The earth itself — we mean the physical cosmos — 
must undergo some remarkable change before it can 
become the elysium of the Christian's hope. Suppose 
that all its inhabitants were to become God-fearing, 
there still would be cosmical calamities — frosts and 
storms and floods and earthquakes — unless God should 
stretch forth His arm and glorify the earth by a won- 
derful miracle. And that is part of the program of 
the general judgment. 

Moreover, God will not coerce men's wills. True, 
He will bring motives to bear upon them, and strong 
motives, too ; but He will never go so far as to destroy 
men's free moral agency — that is, He will not compel 
men to be good and righteous, though He will punish 
them by force if they reject His overtures of love and 
mercy. Now, if God should so modify the world by 
a gradual process, making it so favorable to righteous- 
ness that men could not help being good, that would 
virtually take the spirit of freedom out of man. We do 
not believe God will do that. Rather, He will pursue 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 179 

the plain course outlined in the Bible — let the world 
go on with its struggle, giving all men a chance in some 
way or other to accept salvation, until the " fullness of 
time" shall come, when He will bring the righteous to 
Himself in glory, and cast the wicked into outer dark- 
ness. That process implies and necessitates a judg- 
ment, and a general closing up of the present dispen- 
sation. 

We would offer another argument for the doctrine 
of the general judgment. Everywhere in the Bible 
men are regarded as stewards, servants, workmen of 
God; and it is rational that they should bear such a 
relation to the God who has given them a being in the 
world. What would be thought of an employer who 
never would require an account or settlement from 
his employes? Of the banker who would ask for no 
detailed statement from his bookkeeper? Is it not a 
fact that in all the economic relations of life the em- 
ploye must sometime give an account of his steward- 
ship to his employer? So God will doubtless require 
an account of all His stewards. 

Suppose men should live in the world without any 
feeling of responsibility for their conduct; that they 
can do as they please and will finally die, and that 
will be the end, without any thought of a tribunal; 
what kind of a world would this be? What would 
be thought of its moral order? Would not such li- 
cense open the floodgates of vice ? Nay, it is the pros- 
pect of a judgment bar that incites men to good deeds 
and deters them from evil. The day of final adju- 
dication is a needed factor in the moral government 
of the world. It is one of the strongest sanctions of 
divine law. 

The contention is often made that every man has 
his final day of judgment at the time of his death. 
It is asked, and with some show of reason, why there 
must be a general judgment if each man's destiny is 



x8o THE RATIONAL TEST 

determined when he lays aside "this mortal coil." 
Our reply is, first, the Scriptures plainly teach that all 
the dead shall be raised and shall stand before God 
to receive their final reward. Nowhere in the Bible 
can we find any warrant for the view that the indi- 
vidual judgment given at death will eliminate the 
need of a great and mighty assize for all nations and 
kindred. Besides, when the end comes, there will 
be millions of people still living on the earth, and a 
tribunal will be needed for them. If that is true, why 
should not the dead rise and all people be finally 
judged at the same time and by the same standard? 

It should be remembered, too, that the entire trend 
of Biblical teaching is to the effect that the inter- 
mediate state — the state between death and the resur- 
rection — is only temporary. While the doom of the 
wicked is decided, full measure will not be ad- 
ministered till the resurrection of the body has taken 
place and the public verdict has been pronounced, 
when even death and hell shall be cast into the lake 
of fire; which means, it would seem, that the very 
essence of death and misery will be thrust out of the 
heavenly portion of God's universe. And, further, 
while the righteous are saved forever, at death, and 
have received in the intermediate state all the blessed- 
ness which they are capable of enjoying, they have not 
yet come into the full measure of their possibilities 
until the redeemed spirit has been united with the res- 
urrected and glorified body. The adjustment of all 
these things on so grand and tremendous a scale may 
well make a day of general judgment worth while. 

Nor is that the last consideration. God bears many 
relations to the universe. Had He chosen to live in 
isolated grandeur, He would have been a God without 
relations ; but after He made finite creatures, whether 
angelic or human, He Himself established relations 
with them that cannot rightfully be disregarded. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT l8l 

Therefore He must sometime justify His judgments 
before the assembled hosts of the universe of created 
intelligences. Private judgment would not answer. 
Angels and just men made perfect must behold and 
be able to applaud all the acts of God, or they could 
not be supremely blest. You remember the old ques- 
tion, How can you be happy, even in heaven, if you 
find that some of your friends are not there? That 
question and others that mystify us here in the flesh 
will be satisfactorily answered at and by the general 
judgment, which shall publicly and completely "jus- 
tify the ways of God to man." Then we shall see 
that "the Judge of all the earth will do right/' And 
when we behold the justice and mercy of all His ad- 
judications, we shall acquiesce with acclamations of 
praise, and never again question His wisdom and 
truth. 

Of the modus operandi of the judgment we can know 
but little; indeed, nothing beyond what the Bible 
teaches. Among other things, however, we may de- 
pend upon it that the judgment will be exact and 
minute. Everything in a man's life, his motives, his 
environments, the influence of heredity and natural 
temperament, his outward deeds, the amount of his 
knowledge, all will enter into the adjustment of his 
account. Even every secret thought and deed will be 
brought to light. Only in this way — that is, by taking 
everything into account — can an exact judgment be 
rendered. We may rely upon it that the scales of the 
Lord are balanced to a nicety that knows no defects. 
No man will receive either too severe or too light a 
judgment. When the impenitent sinner sees himself 
as he really is, when all his evil-mindedness is brought 
to light, when his neglect of God's merciful overtures 
is pictured before him as in a mirror, he will see why 
God cannot admit him into heaven, which is a place 
of immaculate righteousness. With no righteousness 



1 83 THE RATIONAL TEST 

of his own but filthy rags to commend him, and no 
heavenly righteousness imputed to him by faith, he 
would be no more fitted for a habitation in heaven than 
the swine, all besmirched from the wallow, would be 
fitted to dwell in a palace of gold. 

There is another question on which we will venture 
a suggestion, though we frankly admit that our views 
may be subject to revision. It is this: Will all the 
sins of those who have repented and accepted salva- 
tion through Christ be divulged at the judgment, so 
that their inner and outer life will be uncovered be- 
fore the gaze of the assembled multitudes of angels 
and men? There are some theologians who contend 
that such will be the case. They reason as follows: 
It will be needful, even for those who are saved, that 
everything be brought out into the light, so that they 
may be able to see their real condition and thus be 
convinced beyond a doubt that they have been saved 
by pure and unmerited grace, removing from their 
hearts the last remnants of self-righteousness. Such 
a revelation will also be necessary, it is maintained, 
for others, so that they may see just why each re- 
deemed person has been saved — that it is not of 
merit, but through the free grace of God. When all 
the saved shall see as clearly as the sun that they 
have been redeemed only by grace, then shall the uni- 
versal anthem of unmingled praise rise to the vault 
of heaven. 

We confess that we are impressed with this reason- 
ing, and if it shall be God's will to have it so, we 
think no one will have cause for complaint. How- 
ever, we are disposed to think that the teaching of the 
Word of God is that, when the penitent and be- 
lieving sinner's iniquities are pardoned, they will 
never appear against him again. God says that He 
will blot them out of the book of His remembrance. 
That could scarcely be true if He brought them forth 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 1 83 

again at the day of judgment. It would prove that, 
after all, He had not forgotten them. He also says that 
He will cast them into the depths of the sea, which 
must mean that He will bury them completely out of 
sight. What would be thought of the idea of His 
digging them up from the unfathomable depths of the 
ocean? Moreover, He avers that He will remove 
our transgressions from us as far as the east is from 
the west; and we know that opposite points of the 
compass can never come together. Thus we think 
the Scripture teaches that when our sins are blotted 
out, they are blotted out once for all, never to appear 
against us again. God will doubtless find some other 
way of convincing every redeemed person that he has 
been saved by grace alone. 

Our next inquiry is, Who shall be the judge at the 
last great assize of the world? It is a comfort to 
know that it will be Jesus Christ, Son of God and 
Son of Man. Not only is this view a great comfort; 
it also opens up a rich field of thought. Let us re- 
member that Christ was human as well as divine; 
truly human; that He tasted of the cup of all human 
experience, whether of joy or sorrow ; that He was 
tempted in all points like as we are, though without 
sin. What could be more fitting than that He, the 
Son of humanity, should be the judge of human con- 
duct at the last day? He knows our life by actual 
experience. He will be able to make allowance for 
every weakness. He will not break the bruised reed, 
nor quench the smoking flax. "He knoweth our 
frame; He remembereth that we are dust." By ex- 
perience of the realities of human life He will know 
where human infirmity ends and human guilt begins. 
He will know the meeting point of human freedom 
and divine grace. Perhaps He could know this with- 
out the experience, that is, simply by an act of omnis- 
cience, but in that case there could never be so close 



184 THE RATIONAL TEST 

a fellow-feeling between Himself and us as there will 
be with Jesus, the Human One, as well as the Divine, 
sitting upon the judgment throne. What a comfort 
it will be to hear Him say: "My people, I know all 
about your toils and trials, your joys and your heart- 
aches, for I am a judge who can be touched with the 
feeling of your infirmities, having been tempted in 
all points as you have been." Are we going too far 
into the realm of speculation when we say that we be- 
lieve Christ's human experience will help Him in de- 
ciding the destiny of those who shall stand before His 
tribunal? Why not? His experiential knowledge of 
human life will temper His judgments, so that they 
will be neither too lenient nor too severe. Do you not 
believe it? At all events, it will bring Him into very 
sympathetic relation with His brethren in the flesh. 

But, of course, it must be remembered that Jesus 
was divine as well as human. Therefore, being omnis- 
cient, He can make no mistakes in adjusting the bal- 
ance in every case. That is precisely the kind of a 
Judge the human family will need. Can we help ad- 
miring the eternal fitness of the gospel scheme ? 

There is still another reason for upholding the doc- 
trine of a general judgment. The Bible teaches ex- 
plicitly, we think, that the general judgment and the 
resurrection of the body will occur at the same time; 
that is, the dead will then be raised, and in company 
with those then living, will stand before the judgment 
bar. Then all of the redeemed will be changed in the 
twinkling of an eye, transfigured into beings of whose 
glory and joy we have to-day only a faint conception. 
It is meet and proper that the general judgment should 
take place at this time, when all the inhabitants of the 
earth, both the quick and the dead, shall stand in one 
vast assemblage before God. What an impressive 
scene it will be! Will the angels and saints ever for- 
get it ? No, it will be an epoch in the experience of all 
immortal beings. 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 1 85 

A few words as to the dual verdict that will be pro- 
nounced on the last day. That some will enter into 
life eternal, while others will be cast away from the 
presence of God forever, seems to be the clear teach- 
ing of God's Word. To our mind it requires a good 
deal of dialectical dexterity and sophistical dodging to 
interpret the words of Christ and His apostles in any 
other way; to eliminate the doctrine of eternal retri- 
bution from the Bible. Perhaps more people have 
stumbled over this doctrine than any other doctrine of 
the Holy Scriptures. Many persons reject the Bible 
almost wholly because it teaches the doctrine of eter- 
nal punishment. However, we may be sure of one 
thing — God will not consign anyone to perdition un- 
less it is the right thing to do. If it were wrong, He 
would not do it. He will save all who ought to be 
saved, and will condemn only those who ought to be 
condemned. "Righteousness and judgment are the 
habitation of His throne. " 

Let us look at this doctrine for a moment in the 
light of reason. What else can God do with those who 
have stubbornly rejected His grace and righteousness ? 
Has He in the nature of things any alternative but to 
punish them ? In their rebellious and defiled condition 
He could not take them into heaven, for that would 
introduce into that realm a discordant and corrupting 
element, and then heaven would not be heaven. But 
might He not cleanse them of their sin and then 
admit them into heaven? That question may be an- 
swered by asking another : Could He cleanse them of 
sin without their consent, without true repentance, or 
simply because they were frightened into pleading for 
mercy by the vision of hell ? That would not be moral 
salvation. Salvation is not a mechanical thing. Sin 
is in the will, in the conscience, in the depths of the 
ethical nature ; hence salvation without true contrition 
and repentance would be no salvation at all. God 



l86 THE RATIONAL TEST 

will not save any man by compulsion; indeed, He 
could not do so without violating the very constitution 
of the ethical universe. There is such a thing as physi- 
cal coercion; but there can be no moral coercion, be- 
cause that would be the destruction of the very foun- 
dations of morality. We must remember that heaven 
is a place of internal as well as external righteousness ; 
a condition as well as a locality. Therefore it is evi- 
dent that God cannot admit the sinful and impenitent 
into heaven. 

Might He not annihilate them ? Perhaps He might ; 
but the Bible does not say a word about the annihila- 
tion of the wicked. If it does, we have never found 
the passage. What does reason teach regarding the 
doctrine of the total extinction of the finally impeni- 
tent? It is little or no punishment to people who are 
steeped in sin and lust. Rather, many would welcome 
it; would be glad, indeed, if they could te sure there 
were no judgment bar and no existence after death. 
For a paltry mess of pottage they would barter their 
birthright to an eternal inheritance at God's right 
hand, if there was the prospect of complete annihila- 
tion after death. They would reason that, if they are 
to be totally destroyed, they will be conscious of no 
loss in eternity, and that will be almost better than 
life in heaven, where the denizens are occupied in 
doing things, anyway, for which the wicked have no 
relish. A heaven where God is worshiped continually 
presents no attractions to the debauched who care 
nothing for God. They would almost as lief be an- 
nihilated. The very fact that many wicked people are 
advocates of the doctrine of annihilation is prima 
facie evidence that it has no terrors for them. The 
only thing they really dread is the judgment day and 
the punitive justice of God. It is only the regener- 
ated man, the man who has tasted of the powers of the 
world to come, who has experienced eternal life in his 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 1 87 

soul, who loves God supremely and aspires for holi- 
ness more than happiness — it is that man only who 
really shrinks with horror from the thought of eternal 
oblivion and extinction. 

Still, our thoughts need not dwell too much on the 
awful doctrine of future retribution. God has made 
ample provision for all who would be saved. He has 
put the means into their hands. No one needs to be 
lost. If any one is lost, it will be in the face of wooing 
love and proffered mercy. Every son of Adam will 
be given a fair chance, and we need not worry that 
God will condemn any individual unjustly, whether 
he lives in a Christian or a heathen land. Indeed, we 
have no occasion to desire to sit on God's judgment 
throne ; for He who made the worlds and devised the 
scheme of redemption will be thoroughly competent to 
adjust the balances at the last day, so that no mistakes 
will occur. 

So far as concerns the whole doctrine of eternal ret- 
ribution, it is probably best not to think too much about 
it, especially not to brood over it, nor to speculate nor 
dogmatize relative to it. The fact is, it is a matter that 
cannot be satisfactorily determined by a process of 
reasoning. This will appear from these considerations : 

First, you may follow the sentimentalist, who thinks 
only of the suffering of the victim and not at all of the 
maintenance of God's laws and government, and you 
may say such a fate for any person is impossible and 
unspeakably cruel. No man would inflict such punish- 
ment upon any creature, rational or animal. Every- 
body, Christian and unbeliever alike, shrinks from the 
thought of such a destiny for anyone. Skeptics are 
not the only persons who start back in terror from the 
thought of endless retribution. All Christians wish 
that some plan could have been devised whereby such 
a fate for the wicked could have been avoided. Some- 
times the rabid sort of infidels speak of Christian peo- 



1 88 THE RATIONAL TEST 

pie as if they really gloated over the idea that any being 
should be consigned to everlasting woe. This is a 
gross canard. Christians really are more distressed 
over the fate assigned to the wicked than the wicked 
are themselves. If it were not so, Christian people 
would not toil and sacrifice and give of their means 
to bring salvation ...to people who have no other than a 
moral claim upon them. So the reasoning of the senti- 
mentalist seems to give a verdict against this doctrine. 

On the other hand, another process of reasoning 
seems to make the doctrine a necessity. What can 
God do with the obstinately wicked? He surely can- 
not admit them into heaven to disorganize and despoil 
that realm. That would simply convert heaven into 
pandemonium. Besides, tell all persons that they will 
be finally saved, no matter how they live in the world, 
and you open the floodgates of vice. The doctrines of 
the Universalist and Restorationist are dangerous to 
the well being of human society and government. And 
what is morally perilous is not likely to be true. Still 
more, for God to annihilate the wicked, saving only 
the righteous, would be contrary to the very constitu- 
tion of things as we know it. Science teaches that not 
even an atom of matter is ever destroyed; how much 
less that infinitely greater entity which we call a 
human, rational personality ! The doctrine of the Anni- 
hilationist is also jeopardous to human society, for it 
is a kind of punishment that the debauchee does not 
dread in the least. Why, the Buddhist even craves 
eternal absorption in the All of the universe. It is 
the highest achievement of his system of religion to 
transform himself into the state of mind when he is 
willing to lose his personality and self-consciousness. 
Only a short time ago, here in our own town, we heard 
a so-called "freethinker" publicly glory in the fact that 
the individual is ground out of conscious existence by 
the law of inexorable evolution, in order that the race 



THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 1 89 

may be preserved. He even declared that nature 
cares nothing for the individual, but is concerned only 
for the welfare of the race. Thus it is plain that the 
prospect of annihilation has little or no terror for the 
sensualist and the materialistic philosopher*. 

So, one process of reasoning reaches the verdict that 
the doctrine of eternal punishment cannot be true; 
another process of reasoning makes it a moral and 
logical necessity. In the circumstances,' what shall be 
done? It is best not to brood and speculate too much 
on the matter, but to trust God for the proper disposi- 
tion of the wicked. We need not put ourselves on the 
throne of judgment. He w r ho made this complicated 
mechanism, the material universe, and that still more 
complicated entity, the moral universe, surely can be 
trusted to unravel all the skeins of human destiny, and 
do right in every case. 

One thing it is always well to remember — that the 
righteous are never threatened with eternal ruin; it is 
only the wicked, the perverse, the impenitent who are 
so menaced. Righteousness and truth are always ex- 
tolled in the Bible ; sin is always condemned. 

Wisdom would also lead us to bear another fact in 
mind — that the Bible gives all men due warning of the 
doom of sin ; therefore, no one can ever complain that 
he was not sufficiently admonished. The Bible also 
teaches that God, with infinite sacrifice, sent His Son 
into the world to save the lost and ruined human 
family, and the Son made infinite sacrifice for the 
same purpose. Therefore, no one can justly complain 
that God did not provide a way of escape from eternal 
wreckage. No exhortation, therefore, should be 
needed to induce all men to accept the overtures of 
divine mercy and grace. 



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